Works
Mena was considered by his contemporaries to be the outstanding poet of his time, and his knowledge of Latin and the Classics was greatly admired. His activities at the court of Juan II brought him into contact with many important figures; the most significant friendship that resulted was with Íñigo López de Mendoza. It persisted until the end of Mena’s life despite important political differences.
His poetry frequently appeared in cancioneros (collections of verse), such as the Cancionero general of Hernando del Castillo, and his works were well-known throughout the sixteenth century, influencing later Spanish poets, such as Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera and Luis de Góngora. The extensive commentary that accompanied later editions of Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna, such as those of Hernán Núñez (1499) and Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (1582), provide further evidence of the extent of his literary influence in Spain. His style is marked by its frequent use of Latinisms and hyperbaton, as well as by mentions of a wide array of figures from Greco-Roman mythology. In his imitation of classical and medieval sources, such as Dante, Mena helped stretch the capabilities of a fledgling Castilian literary tradition, paving the way for later poets. It is largely due to the awkwardness and weight of his style and lexicon that his influence began to wane in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and fell out of favor with nineteenth-century critics. Modern critics have reinstated Mena’s importance to Spain’s literary history and consider him to be one of the three major poets of the fifteenth century, along with Íñigo López de Mendoza and Jorge Manrique.
Read more about this topic: Juan De Mena
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you don’t look too closely. Artists are cleaners, don’t let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men.”
—Francis Picabia (1878–1953)
“That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.”
—Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)