Historical Implications
Mena’s work may have achieved its propagandistic goals in the short-term. Mena presented the poem to the king in 1444 at a time of crisis, when Juan II was being held under house arrest by his rival cousins of Aragón and Navarra. Perhaps in part inspired by the poem, the king once again backed Luna, and this favorite reached his peak of power after the First Battle of Olmedo in 1445. Nevertheless, in 1453 Luna was beheaded by order of the king, and Juan II himself died not long after. Mena’s final years were spent with the knowledge that his political goals had not, in the end, been achieved. And yet, the work itself survived and thrived, partly because of the political debate which developed around the figure of Álvaro de Luna. It is now considered one of the most important works of late-medieval Spain.
Read more about this topic: Laberinto De Fortuna
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or implications:
“We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it—this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)