Born: Cordoba, Spain, 11 July 1561. Education: Educated at Jesuit school in Cordoba; University of Salamanca, 1576-80, no degree. Career: Took minor orders at university, and deacon’s orders, 1586: prebendary of Cordoba Cathedral, 1586-1617: undertook various business trips for the Cathedral; ordained priest, 1617, and royal chaplain in Madrid, 1617-25. Died: 23 May 1627.
Publications
Collections
Obras en verso del Homero espanol, edited by Juan Lopez de Vicuna.1627; also edited by Damaso Alonso, 1963.
Todas las obras, edited by Gonzalo de Hozes y Cordoba. 1633.
Obras completas, edited by Juan and Isabel Mille y Gimenez. 1972.
Luis de Gongora: Selected Shorter Poems, translated by Michael Smith. 1995
Obras completas, edited with prologue by Antonio Carreira. 2000.
Verse
Soledades, edited by Damaso Alonso. 1927, revised edition, 1956; also edited by Alfonso Gallejo and Maria Teresa Pajares, with Fabula de Polifemo y Galatea, 1985; as The Solitudes, translated by Edward M. Wilson, 1931; translated by Gilbert F. Cunningham, 1968; also translated by Philip Polack, 1997.
Fabula de Polifemo y Galatea, as Gongora y el "Potifemo,” edited by Damaso Alonso. 1960, revised edition, 2 vols., 1961; also edited by Alfonso Gallejo and Maria Teresa Pajares, with Las Soledades, 1985; as Polyphemus and Galatea, translated by Gilbert F. Cunningham, 1977; as The Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, translated by Miroslav John Hanak, 1988.
Romance de ”Angelicay Medoro,” edited by Damaso Alonso. 1962.
Sonetos completos, edited by Birute Ciplijauskaite. 1969.
Romances (selection), edited by Jose Maria de Cossno. 1980.
Las firmezas de Isabela, edited by Robert Jammes. 1984.
Fabula de Piramo y Tisbe, edited by David Garrison. 1985.
Cuadernos de varias poesias, manuscrito patentino, edited by Lorenzo Rubio Gonzalez. 1985.
Critical Studies:
The Metaphors of Gongora by E.J. Gates, 1933; Gongora by D.W. and V.R. Foster, 1973; Gongora: Polyphemus and Galatea: A Study in the Interpretation of a Baroque Poem (includes text and translation by Gilbert F. Cunningham) by Alexander A. Parker, 1977; The Poet and the Natural World in the Age of Gongora by M.J. Woods, 1978; Aspects of Gongora’s ”Soledades" by John R. Beverley, 1980; The Sonnets of Luis de Gongora by R.P. Calcraft, 1980; Gongora’s Poetic Textual Tradition: An Analysis of Selected Variants, Versions, and Imitations of His Shorter Poems by Diane Chaffee-Sorace, 1988; Poetry as Play: "Gongorismo" and the ”Comedia” by Maria Cristina Quintero, 1991; Silva gongorina by Andres Sanchez Robayna, 1993; Combinatorias hispanicas by Jose Lezama Lima, 1993; Gracian Meets Gongora by M.J. Woods, 1995; The Transforming Text: A Study of Luis de Gongora’s Soledades by R. John McCaw, 2000.
Luis de Gongora was a remarkable poet who made a significant contribution in a variety of poetic fields, expanding the range of poetry by his conception of the ballad as a more sophisticated, artistically balanced form than was traditional, by his promotion of the burlesque as a valid artistic form, and, in the case of his most famous major poem, Soledades (The Solitudes), by creating a work that not only did not fit into any recognized genre, but also had a dazzling stylistic novelty.
Having already acquired a reputation as a writer of fine sonnets and ballads from the publication of a number of his poems in a general anthology in 1605, Gongora in his native Andalusia dreamed of making a career for himself at the court in Madrid. Hence in 1614 copies of his Solitudes and his Polifemo y Galatea (Polyphemus and Galatea), major poems he had recently completed, were being circulated at court and caused a major literary controversy which centred upon the original and exceptionally difficult style in which they were written. There was a spate of letters, pamphlets, and poems attacking and defending Gongora. Although he never achieved the patronage he sought, he attracted many imitators, and detailed explanatory commentaries of his works were published later in the century.
The features of Gongora’s style attracting comment were his use of neologisms (so-called cultismos), his liberties with syntax, particularly word order, and frequency and complexity of his metaphors. But it is misleading to portray Gongora’s novelty as merely stylistic, a question of mode of expression rather than of what was being said. Thematically, the major poems give a novel prominence to the world of nature. With his Polyphemus and Galatea, which retells the story found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses of the giant Polyphemus’ love for Galatea and his enraged killing of her lover, Acis, despite the importance that Gongora gives the rural Sicilian setting we still have basically a narrative poem. But in his Solitudes, of which there are two of an originally planned four, the second being unfinished, we have basically a descriptive poem, which is in itself a novelty. Gongora shows the hospitality offered by a rustic community to a shipwrecked young courtier, presenting their way of life and the environment in which they live in an enthusiastic way. When we consider Gongora’s use of metaphor as a means of presenting this positive vision, again it is clear that we are dealing with a mode of thought, not merely one of speech. It is through metaphor that he draws attention to surprising patterns and relationships in the world, inviting us to wonder at them. Hence, when he calls the sea ”a Lybia of waves,” he invites us to consider the parallels between desert and sea, their common vastness and inhospitability, dunes mirroring waves, and at the same time surprises us by describing the extremely wet in terms of the extremely dry. Through such explorations of relationships Gongora reveals himself as a major exponent of wit.
