La introducción del endecasílabo en España: el caso de Juan Boscán

Juan Boscán’s sonnets represent the first real attempt to adapt the Italian metre par excellence to the Spanish traditional lyric. The Barcelonian author is the pioneer of Petrarchism in Spain because of his adherence to the typical Italian models, which are at once metrical and prosodical (the hendecasyllabic metre) and cultural (the cult of humanism). In fact, the experimentation with the hendecasyllable in Spain is not a specific trait of the 16th century. As early as the 15th century, two important poetic works were written: the Dezir a las siete virtudes, an allegoric poem by Francisco Imperial, influenced by Dante’s poetry and composed in Spanish coplas of eight hendecasyllables, and, a few decades later, the Marqués de Santillana’s forty-two Sonetos al itálico modo. The aim of this article is to describe the modalities thanks to which Boscán carries out the process of introduction and development of the sonnet in the 16th century Spanish lyric poetry. In particular, I will consider the influence of the Petrarchan model upon his poems.