En la Corte la ignorancia vive […] y […] son poetas todos. Mecenazgo, bibliofilia y comunicación literaria en la cultura aristocrática de corte

Abstract

This paper examines the links between the Court Nobility and the literary world of the Spanish Golden Age. For different reasons many aristocrats patronized the work of poets, dramatists and historians. They were stimulated by personal interests, by an idealistic commitment to scholarship or simply to continue a long-established family tradition. On the other hand, writers like Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Luis Velez de Guevara, Gabriel Lobo, Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera and Manuel de Faria e Sousa decided to address their works to the most powerful courtiers, in the hope of gaining their favour and, ultimately, their own advancement. This paper addresses some important aspects of this literary relationship of the aristrocratic court culture. The rich collections of noble and literary correspondence provide a huge body of evidence which facilitate a deeper understanding of the ways in which literature was patronised by the Spanish nobility of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries and the consequences of this patronage in the development of the Spanish Golden Age literary life.