Poetics of imitation in Renaissance Neo-Latin poetry: sources, clichés and fortuitous linguistic coincidences

Abstract

By analysing the Latin poetic work of the Spanish humanist Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (= Sanctius), the aim of this article is to show and explain some general rules with which it is possible to establish the difference between “source”, “cliché” and “fortuitous linguistic coincidence”. According to these rules, to be able to speak of an authentic “source”, it is necessary that the coincidental words between a Renaissance author and an author of Antiquity fulfil the following five requirements: to be words with complete lexical meaning, to form a syntagm between them, to be used by poets, to be used with not much frecuency and to be not very common words.