Note note to p. 67 — POESÍAS DE LOS SIGLOS XVI-XVII

JUAN BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER. A Catalonian who wrote in Castilian with great success. He served in the Spanish army in Italy, and was later a tutor to the Duke of Alba. His earlier verses are in the national manner. Prompted, it is said, by the Venetian ambassador Navagiero, he became an Italianate, and, following the 357 lead of Imperial and Santillana, was much more influential than they in establishing Italian verse methods in Castilian. He has made a large use of the hendecasyllable, the verso suelto or blank verse (imitated from the Italian versi sciolti), the ottava rima and the sonnet, and has frequently imitated Dante, Petrarch, and the cinque cento poets of Italy. Among his more important poetical works are the Hero y Leandro and the Octava rima, this latter being an allegorical poem from which the verses on p. 68 ff. are an excerpt. The influence of the Italian poet Bembo is clear in the Octava rima. In his translation of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, Boscán showed a mastery of Castilian prose. Cf. W. T. Knapp, Las obras de Juan Boscán, Madrid, 1875, and G. Baist, Spanische Literatur (Gröber’s Grundriss, II, 2, 449 ff.).