La Grandeza Mexicana de Bernardo de Balbuena

$100 · Offered by Book Collector Inc

Author: Balbuena, Bernardo de (c1561-1627), Van Horne, John (editor) Year: 1930 Publisher: University of Illinois Press Place: Urbana Description: 176 pages with facsimiles, errata laid in. Small quarto (10 1/4" x 7") bound in original wrappers. University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Volume XV, number 3. Bernardo de Balbuena (c1561-1627) was a Spanish poet. He was the first of a long series of Latin American poets who extolled the special beauties of the New World. Born in Valdepenas, Spain around 1561, Balbuena came to the New World as a young adult and lived in Guadalajara, Jalisco and Mexico City, where he studied theology. In 1606 he returned to Spain and earned the degree of Doctor of Theology, and rose within the Church to become Abbot in Jamaica (1610) and one of the early Bishops of Puerto Rico (1620). Despite his priestly duties, he found time to write long and elegant verses which are excellent examples of the Baroque tendency to heavily load (and sometimes overload) poetry with highly detailed descriptions. Unfortunately, many of his manuscripts and his library were burned by Dutch pirates during a 1625 attack on Puerto Rico. He died two years later. Perhaps his best work is Grandeza mexicana (Mexico's Grandeur, published in 1604), in which he replies in elegant and lyrical verse to a nun who asked him for a description of the young Spanish city of Mexico. Balbuena takes advantage of this opportunity to present a detailed inventory of the compli

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.