Beyond poetry: friendship as a creative act between Garcilaso and Boscán

Abstract

The friendship between the poets Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán will be analyzed from the Aristotelian concept of virtuous philía, a term proposed in Nicomachean Ethics, in order to observe how their relationship transcended the biographical and shaped an ethical-aesthetic paradigm in the Hispanic Renaissance. Following Aristotle's tripartite classification—utility, pleasure, and virtue (322)—it is argued that their bond corresponds to the third type due to its reciprocal, stable nature, founded on aretḗ/virtue (moral excellence), evidenced in three dimensions: 1) literary collaboration, where the joint introduction of Italian forms (sonnet, Petrarchan song) reflects a synérgeia based on mutual trust—“pues con verdad y amor me fue mostrado”—(Boscán); 2) epistolary writing, particularly Garcilaso's “Epístola a Boscán”, in which “perfect friendship” is associated with creative freedom, echoing Aristotle's idea that the virtuous friend is “otro yo” (370); and 3) posthumous memory, analyzing Boscán's elegiac sonnet (“¡Oh, hado ejecutivo en mis dolores!”) and his edition Obras de Garcilaso (1543) as acts of pietas (devotion-respect) that fulfill the precept of “desear el bien del amigo por sí mismo” (359). The paper combines philological methodologies (textual analysis of primary sources) and philosophical methodologies (hermeneutics of ethical concepts), drawing on critics such as Claudio Guillén, Charles B. Moore and Pedro Ruiz Pérez.