Garcia de Resende

Who was Garcia de Resende?

Garcia de Resende 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 Évora, the pantheon of the Alentejo nobility, where he was buried.

He compiled the Cancioneiro Geral, probably starting in 1483, though not printed until 1516, which includes the compositions of some three hundred fidalgos of the reigns of kings Afonso V, John II, and Manuel I.

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 a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.