Diego de San Pedro
Diego de San Pedro (1437-1498?) was a Pre-Renaissance Spanish poet and storyteller in Castilian, author of the sentimental novel Cárcel de amor (1492), one of the most widely read in Europe of his time: already in his lifetime it was reprinted and translated into French, German, English, Italian and Flemish, at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, among other works of his.
Biography
There are not many certainties about the life of Diego de San Pedro. It has been taken for granted that he was a Bachelor of Laws and that in 1459 he was governor or warden of the fortress of Peñafiel (Valladolid), where he lived most of his life; but it is possible that the documents that support it refer not to our author, but to a namesake of him. However, it is true that Peñafiel was one of the Girón lordships, whom he served almost all his life. He has also said that he was a converted Jew, but no consistent evidence has ever been provided in this regard.
It does seem proven that he served the master of Calatrava, Don Pedro Girón, and later his sons Juan Téllez Girón, 2nd Count of Ureña, perhaps between 1469 and 1498, and Rodrigo Téllez Girón, also a Calatravian master. Until 1476 it is very likely that he was politically on the side of Juana la Beltraneja and that later, like the Girón family, he was a supporter of the Catholic Monarchs. He probably participated in the Granada War, where he would have met Diego Fernández de Córdoba to whom he dedicated his sentimental novel Cárcel de Amor (1492), an international success. Over the years he became more and more religious, so that he rejected the profane works of his youth and composed pious poetry. He died after 1500, exactly what year is unknown.
Works
In the Cancionero General by Hernando del Castillo there are some interesting poems of his ("Sermón", "Contempt for Fortune"), but he is better known for his two sentimental novels, the Tratado de amores de Arnalte y Lucenda (1491) and Cárcel de amor (1492), in which courtly love intervenes.
In the Tratado de amores de Arnalte y Lucenda, the narrative opens and closes with the author invoking the ladies of the court, including an exchange of letters between the lovers and a series of dialogues between them and with other characters (Belisa and El Ierso) and between Arnalte and the author himself, who acts as the spurned lover's confidante and as the custodian of the story. Some poetic compositions are also inserted (invocation to the Virgin and hers seven of her & # 34; anguishes & # 34;). It was translated into Catalan by Bernardi Valmanya (1493), into French first from Italian (Prison d'amour, Paris, 1525 and Lyon, 1528) and then by Nicolás de Herberay des Essarts (1539), into Italian by Lelio de Manfredi (Carcer d'amore, 1513, published in Venice, 1514), and into English by Lord Berners (The Castell of Love, 1533, printed mid-century) and then by the Huguenot linguist and grammarian Claude de Sainliens / Claudius Holyband (1575). There was also a German version.
Cárcel de amor, composed between 1483 and 1485 and printed in 1492, was a real publishing success at the time; It was even printed with a sequel by Nicolás Núñez (1496), and was soon translated into other European languages: Italian (1513), French (1526 and 1552), English (1560). It continued to be republished and translated into the 17th century. It tells an unfortunate love story, like the previous one, this time between Leriano and Laureola, and the slow suicide of the former. A large part of the novel is epistolary. It has been considered the Werther of the 15th century.
It exerted a certain influence on La Celestina (1499) by Fernando de Rojas, since one of the most beautiful passages in the book, the crying of Leriano's mother, recalls the planting of Pleberio in that construction site. The sources of it are from the Elegia di Madonna Fiammeta by Giovanni Boccaccio to Dantesque elements and the legend of the Holy Grail. He also influenced the Penances of Love by Pedro Manuel de Urrea, also translated.
In both novels, eroticism follows the conventions of courtly love and is represented allegorically. In his careful style, paradoxes, antithesis and oxymoron are used.
Editions
- Tractado de amors de Arnalte y Lucenda, Burgos, German Fadrique of Basel, 1491.
- ^Prison of love, Seville, 1492 (ed. de C. Parrilla and Keith Whinnom, prol. by Alan Deyermond, Barcelona, Critics, 1995).
- Coils of the Passion of Our Redemptor, Zaragoza, Hurus, 1492.
- Despise of the Fortune, in The CCC of the most famous poet Juan de Mena with his glorious; and the cinquent with his glorious; and other works, Zaragoza, Coci, 1506.
- Sermon ordered by Diego de Sant PedroAlcalá de Henares, Arnao Guillén de Brocar, 1511.
- Worksed. by Samuel Gili Gaya, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1950.
- Complete worksKeith Whinnom, Madrid, Castalia, 1972-1979, 3 vols.
- Love prison. Arnalte and Lucenda. Sermoned. by Juan Francisco Ruiz Casanova, Madrid, Cátedra, 1995.