Love and Empire in Garcilaso de la Vega’s Latin Odes

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture

Professor Jay Reed (Classics and Comparative Literature, Brown University)

The Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega’s three surviving Latin odes (from around 1532-36) have begun to be studied for the way they—like his much larger Spanish output—juxtapose and intertwine imperial and erotic themes. In both bodies of work there emerges a complex, ambivalent stance toward the project (which Garcilaso the courtier and soldier avowedly participated in) of the literary and political restoration of Rome in the form of the empire of Charles V. Professor Reed’s focus on the third ode, an uncharacteristic mythological narrative about Venus and Cupid, discloses its canny, oblique rereading of ancient discourses of imperial foundation and justification, particularly that of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Click here to download the poems and notes related to Professor Reed’s lecture.

Funding for CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholars is provided by the Humanities Division of the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences, and the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of English.