Comentario de la «Canción a una dama hermosa y borracha»

Abstract

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This paper is a study of a poem by Quevedo, the «Canción a una dama hermosa y borracha» («Song to a beautiful and drunken lady», number 622 in Blecua’s edition). The analysis begins with an exploration of the different stages in the textual transmission of the poem. The first version is found in a 1603 manuscript cancionero; the text was later touched up and copied in cancioneros circa 1627-1628; finally it was published posthumously in 1648 in a version extensively retouched by its editor, González de Salas. The poem, written in stanzas combining seven- and eleven-syllable lines, adopts the form of a Petrarchan song in that it employs a good number of motifs from the love lyric. Quevedo, however, departs from the expectations of a Petrarchan song in the last line of each stanza by introducing a pun that mocks the common places of Petrarchan poetry. Thus, the text becomes an anti-Petrarchan exercise.