Mockery and Myth in Góngora's Sonnets

Abstract

In some of his sonnets, Luis de Góngora adopted a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards mythology, and attitude that allowed him to express his own interests or even biographical memories, be they on love («Muerto me lloró el Tormes en su orilla»), death («Ícaro de bayeta, si de pino» and «Tonante monseñor, ¿de cuándo acá?»), or literary wars («Pisó las calles de Madrid el fiero» and «Es el Orfeo del señor don Juan»). This new optics was possible because, through mocking transgression, the poet makes his gods and heroes descend from Olympus, and therefore they inhabit in human terrain, and, more concretely, in the more or less personal and biographical sphere of the poet. In the sonnets in question, Góngora projected his artistic ideas on burlesque poetry, obtaining results which, in happy consonance with his parodic epyllia, have reached the highest peaks of aesthetic value.