Rimas Humanas Y Divinas Del Licenciado Tome De Burguillos . Una Lectura Erotica

Resumen del Libro

In this study we analyze the erotic meaning of the compositions in Rimas humanas y divinas del Licenciado Tome de Burguillos. This work, written by an aged but still lucid author, shows us a long and rich life from a personal and artistic point of view. It is also a perfect example of the use of sex in literature as a tool to deconstruct a preexisting esthetic, in this case, that of Petrarch. By Lopes era, the overuse of Petarchan cliches in literature had already left those same cliches devoid of meaning. Lope shows that he was aware of that phenomenon, and turned it on itself, mocking it through a provocative language full of multiple meanings, among them erotic. In Tome de Burguillos, the suffering lover and the disdainful lady become, in turn, a poor cleric whose amorous sentiments are overcome by hunger and by the desires of the flesh, and a greedy washerwoman, whose favors depend on the purse strings of those who flatter her. In this case, courtly love applies to a brothel atmosphere on the banks of the River Manzanares, lacking in both water and in beauty. The language used makes an accomplice out of the new cliche, through new areas of meaning that subvert the rigidity of the previous lyric lexicon. The burlesque themes and language allow the incorporation of new understandings that push aside pure, Petrachan love, in favor of eroticism. Lope used a polysemic terminology, and a conceptism that were easily recognizable by his contemporaries. Both were especially linked to a long popular and elite tradition of erotic literature, something he uses to give sexual meaning to apparently non-erotic compositions. The shattering of the cliches through use of a pre-existing erotic language allows us to examine a body of poems from Rimas del Tome de Burguillos and to find there a sensual undercurrent to which, until now, no one had paid attention.