Garcia de Resende

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Garcia de Resende (1470–1536) was a Portuguese poet and editor. He served John II as a page and private secretary, and later became a knight in the Order of Christ. Resende built a chapel in the monastery of Espinheiro near Evora, the pantheon of the Alemtejo nobility, where he was buried.

He compiled the Cancioneiro Geral (General Songbook), probably starting in 1483, though not printed until 1516, which includes the compositions of some three hundred fidalgos of the reigns of kings Alphonso V, John II, and Manoel.

The main subjects of its pieces are love, satire and epigram; and most of them are written in the national redondilha verse, but the metre is irregular and the rhyming careless. The Spanish language is largely employed, because the literary progenitors of the whole collection were Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, Boscan and Garcilasso. As a rule the compositions were improvised at palace entertainments, at which the poets present divided into two bands, attacking and defending a given theme throughout successive evenings.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.