Íñigo López de Mendoza, the Marqués de Santillana | David William Foster (essay date September 1967)
David William Foster (essay date September 1967)
SOURCE: Foster, David William. “Sonnet XIV of the Marqués de Santillana and the Waning of the Middle Ages.” Hispania 50, no. 3 (September 1967): 442-46.
[In the following essay, Foster views Santillana's use of religious imagery in a secular poem as reflective of a larger movement toward secularization in fifteenth-century Spain.]
Johan Huizinga, discussing the secularization of the topoi of religious praise in his study The Waning of the Middle Ages, observes:
While religious symbolism represented the realities of nature and history as symbols or emblems of salvation, on the other hand religious metaphors were borrowed to express profane sentiments. […]
Although we may consider such formulae of adulation empty phrases, they show nonetheless the depreciation of sacred imagery resulting from hackneyed use. […]
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