Humanism and Commentary in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Juan de Mena and Alonso de Cartagena

Abstract

This paper proposes a comparison between two commentaries, the gender par excellence in the Humanism, within the complex context of the evaluation of the fifteenth-century Castilian ‘Humanism’: Juan de Mena’s glosses to his own poem Coronación del Marqués de Santillana (Crowning of the Marquis of Santillana, 1438-1439) and Alonso de Cartagena’s glosses to his own translation of several passages from Seneca’s Tragedies (ca. 1431). From this analysis of several glosses devoted to mythological characters, the paper holds the view that Cartagena’s ‘professional’ and literal text is a better precedent to the later Humanism that Mena’s allegorical and scholar commentary.