Lope de Vega's Evolving Rhetoric and Poetics: The Dedicatory Epistle to Arguijo (Rimas, 1602)

LOPE DE VEGA’S EVOLVING RHETORIC AND POETICS: THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO ARGUIJO (RIMAS, 1602) by Gary J. Brown “dirás que es fingimiento tanto papel escrito, tantas imitaciones, tantas flores vestidas de retóricos colores.” (Égloga a Claudio) APPARENTLY uninterested in producing a comprehensive treatise like those of the Italians (Tasso, Daniello, Minturno, Castelvetro) or his Spanish contemporaries (Díaz Rengifo, López Pinciano, Cascales, Carvallo, Jiménez Patón), Lope de Vega interspersed ideas about poetry, rhetoric and poetic theory within introductory prologues, prose compositions and poems, while choosing to develop his views on theatre in the rhymed-verse treatise Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Lope’s voice of literary reflection thus is conflated with different postures and modes of expression, characterized by a fascination with self as literary personage that is recreated “a fin de ventilar una meditación sobre el arte de escribir poesía” as Mary Gaylord Randel observes (Poética 32). This study focuses on one of Lope’s early reflections on non-dramatic literary theory, the dedicatory epistle to Juan de Arguijo “Para escribir Virgilio de las abejas…” (Rimas, 1602). Leaving aside its companion “Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía” for a later study, I contend that in this disorganized and defensive “discurso” (Lope’s word), he frames the issues of rhetoric and poetics from inventive yet conservatively evolving views of imitation and style which in part formed the basis for his later reaction to Góngora and the nueva poesía. This discussion analyzes inchoate concepts in Lope’s “discurso” and relates them to reflections about the plain style, his humanistic and gradually 29 refined conception of imitation, along with the issues of invention, ars and ingenium that are influenced by his varying perceptions of poetics, rhetoric and dialectic. Aside from the annotated editions of Lope’s epistle in Pedraza Jiménez (Rimas I: 132-53) and Carreño (Rimas 575-589, 1035-1039) and an essay by Luisa López Grigera (Teorías), no attention has been paid the formative ideas of this “discurso” and their impact upon the development of Lope’s rhetoric and poetics.1 1580-1602: YEARS OF EXPERIMENTATION Lope’s reflections on poetics from 1580-1602 are based on his experimentation with form and genre characterized by the popular romances of the 1590’s, the epic La Dragontea (1598), the prose pastoral eclogue La Arcadia (1598) with its collection of poetry in virtually all of the verse forms of the period , the hagiographic narrative poem El Isidro composed in the simple “redondillas de cinco versos” (1599), the romance epic poem La hermosura de Angélica in octavas reales (composed from 1588, published in 1602), and the sonnet sequence of the Rimas (1602).2 In this early phase, given the temporary suspension of staging comedias in Madrid, Lope embraced the role of lyric and epic poet that he hoped would rival his popularity as dramatist for the vulgo and composer of fashionable ballads . (By this time Lope had composed 219 plays according to his list in the 1604 edition of El peregrino en su patria). Equally as important was the opportunity these poems offered for presenting self as the humanist-inspired “poeta eruditus” or “poeta-philosophus” of classical and medieval heritage,3 a posture he would readily assume when proffering anecdotes about his own poetry and that of his contemporaries. MURMURACIONES – MOTIVES FOR A DEFENSE Lope’s contemporary Jiménez Patón who quoted him extensively in the Eloquencia Española en arte (1604, revised 1621) considered Lope’s epistle to Arguijo a justified response to his critics: “… sin causa le ha murmurado quien dice que no guarda artificio ni precetos retóricos, porque es en ellos tan universal como he dicho, y como lo da a entender en la satisfación que dirigió a don Juan Arguijo” (188, italics added). Pedraza Jiménez observes that “Es, sustancialmente, una refutación de los ataques que se dirigieron a la Arcadia y una apología anticipada de La hermosura de Angélica y de las Rimas” (Rimas 1:132) and López Grigera echoes this observation (Teorías 184). The fact that Lope’s epistle (along...