Deities Off Their Pedestal: A New Generic Template for Low Baroque Poetry

Abstract

The traditional opposition between Baroque and Neoclassicism or Enlightment, as well as the practice of the historiographical cuts, has left in the dark a broad chronological and ideological space, which can be characterized by the movement between continuity and innovation. The notion of bajobarroco may be useful as historiographical and critical category, including its potency to account for this specific dynamics, particularly in the field of poetry. By its particular features, such as academic anthology and printed volume, by its themes and formal molds, and by the profile of its members, the Guirnalda poética (1734) is presented as a model of changes in the baroque components (sociability, position of the poetry, treatment of the female figure, stylistic register), resulting in the formation of a new ideological and aesthetic horizon.