A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe - Garcilaso de La Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe |
University of Pennsylvania Press (2007) |
In Collection
#2764 |
0* |
Lit Crit |
Hardcover 0812240049
English |
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But, as Helgerson shows, the new poetry had other commitments than to empire. Though imperial ambition looms large in Garcilaso's sonnet and others, by the end of the poem Garcilaso identifies not with Rome but with the Carthaginian queen Dido, one of empire's legendary victims. And with this startling shift, which has its counterpart in poems from all over Europe, comes one of the most important departures the poem makes from its apparent imperial agenda.
Addressing these rival concerns as they arise in a single sonnet, Richard Helgerson provides a masterful and multifaceted image of one of the most vital episodes in European literary history.