“La tormenta del tormento”: un tópico amatorio y juego verbal en la poesía española de la temprana edad moderna
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English title. “The Tempest of Torment”: A Literary Love Topos and Pun in the Spanish Poetry of the Early Modern Age.
The literary topos of Love Seafaring (navigium amoris) can be defined as the figurative association between love and seafaring. As a topos, it sprung in Classical literature, encompassing a set of six motifs: the twofold character of Aphrodite-Venus, the comparison of sexual relationship to sailing or rowing, the comparison of woman and/or love to the sea, the love tempest, the arrival to harbor and the votive offering. From these classical origins, the topos was creatively elaborated on in the European poetry of the Early Modern Age. More specifically, the topos was a favorite of Petrarchan poetry. When the motif of the Love Tempest was combined with the topos of Love Torture,
the conceit of “la tormenta del tormento” (the Tempest of Torment) developed. In this paper, this concetto is tracked back to the “Cancionero”-poetry of the 15th century (Arcediano de Toro, Nicolás Guevara, and Gil Vicente’s Nao de amores) and to texts written in the 16th century by Spanish poets of a Petrarchan penchant (Juan Boscán, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Luis Martín de Plaza, and Gutierre de Cetina). The conceit of the Tempest of Torment is exclusive of Spanish poetry and evokes the codes of Courtly Love and of Petrarchan Love.