Garcilaso, the Duke of Alba and the Turks: a paper victory?

Abstract

This paper proposes a reading of the panegyric part of Garcilaso de la Vega’s Égloga II from the perspective of the “chivalric ideology”. In addition to its obvious experimental aesthetic dimension, the significance of this poem, the longest and most complex of the poems by the Toledo-born poet, also lies in its role as praise of the Duke of Alba as the highest representative of a noble ethos that projects its participation in the reign of Charles V through his commitment to a struggle against the Turkish threat that permeated all layers of official discourse, both spiritual and political, during the 1520s.