Description

Francisco de Quevedo was known throughout seventeenth-century Europe as the author of two Spanish best-sellers, the picaresque novel El buscón, and the satirical Sueños. Thoroughly Baroque in style, the poems share many traits with the metaphysical poetry of Quevedo's English contemporaries. His poetry has been a major influence on modern Spanish and Latin American poets. This study of the poetry combines a stylistic analysis with a philosophical interpretation in the broad sense. It is thus an aesthetic and existential study and concentrates on the love sonnets of 'High Style'. The poet confronts the courtly tradition with experience, taking a stand against its ethical restrictions. By means of irony and conceptismo, the wit displayed in his poetic conceits, Quevedo attempts to solve the conflict between ideal love and sensual passion. Professor Olivares also shows that the thoughts and emotions evoked by the experience of love are inseparable from Quevedo's anguished world vision.