Aristocracy, Academy, and the Printing Press: Díez y Foncalda in His Aragonese Environment

Abstract

In the Zaragoza of the mid-seventeenth century proliferated academies and the printing of poetry books; the relationships between the authors formed a thick plot (academies, dedications, preliminaries, anthologies...) in which more than literary links were established. Taking as point of departure the figure of Alberto Díez y Foncalda (Poesías varias, Juan de Ibar, Zaragoza, 1653), we propose a reconstruction of a substantial part of this network and an attempt of interpretation. About Díez y Foncalda little is known, and only through intermediate texts and poems of his colleagues from the academy of the conde de Lemos and that of his son, the conde de Andrade; in this article we try to unravel something more about his figure and his poetic and personal relationships.