SOURCE: Weiss, Julian. Introduction to The Poet's Art: Literary Theory in Castile c. 1400-60, pp.1-24. Oxford: The Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Weiss surveys the social and theoretical principles expressed in Castilian poetry of the fifteenth century.

1 Aims and Scope

The fifteenth century in Castile saw an astonishing outburst of poetic creativity which, at least in terms of quantity, was unmatched by any other European country.¹ The early decades of the period also witnessed important changes both of a literary and a linguistic nature. Galician finally gave way to Castilian as the dominant lyric medium; the latinizing school of the modernos began, led by Villena and Juan de Mena, whose experiments in the sublime style earned the reprobation of generations of scholars from Alonso de Cartagena to Menéndez y Pelayo and beyond.² From both France and Italy, new...