Crueldad y narcisismo: análisis de un tópico petrarquista en la poesía de Juan Boscán

Petrarch’s sonnets XLV («Il mio adversario in cui veder solete») and XLVI («L’oro e le perle e i fior vermigli e i bianchi») are regarded as two paradigmatic examples of Laura’s narcissism, who looks at herself in the mirror and, while admiring her beauty reflecting on it, does not show any interest for the poet. The purpose of this article is to analyse the modalities carried out by Juan Boscán, a Petrarchist Spanish author of the 16th century, to reelaborate the topos of woman’s vanitas in his poetic works. First of all, in this research I will offer an analysis of a poem that has not been thoroughly studied by critics, that is, the poem 19, included in the Libro IV in the most recent edition by Carlos Clavería (1999), in order to identify the intertextual relations with the already mentioned Petrarchan sources. Secondly, I will consider a series of texts (sonnets as well as coplas written in verses of arte menor) that present an alternative development of the literary motif, without any reference to the myth of Narcissus.