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GARCIA DE RESENDE (1470-1536)

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Originally appearing in Volume V23, Page 182 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GARCIA DE RESENDE (1470-1536)  , Portuguese poet and editor, was born at
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Evora, and began to serve John II. as a page at the age of ten, becoming his private secretary in 1491 . He was
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present at his
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death at Alvor on the 25th of
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October 1495 . He continued to enjoy the same favour with King Manoel, whom he accompanied to Castile in 1498, and from whom he obtained a
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knighthood of the Order of Christ . In 1514 Resende went to Rome with Tristao da Cunha, as secretary and treasurer of the famous
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embassy sent by the king to offer the tribute of the East at the feet of Pope Leo X . In 1516 he was given the rank of a nobleman of the royal household, and became escrivao de fazenda to Prince John, afterwards King John III., from whom he received further
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pensions in 1525 . Resende built a
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chapel in the monastery of Espinheiro near Evora, the pantheon of the Alemtejo
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nobility, where he was buried . He began to cultivate the making of verses in the palace of John II., and he tells us how one
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night when the king was in bed he caused him (Resende) to repeat some " trovas " of Jorge Manrique, saying it was as needful for a man to know them as to know the Pater Noster . Under these conditions, Resende grew up no mean poet, and moreover distinguished himself by his skill in
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drawing and
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music; while he collected into an album the best court verse of the time . The Cancioneiro Geral, probably begun in 1483 though not printed until 1516, includes the compositions of some three
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hundred fidalgos of the reigns of kings
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Alphonso V., John II. and Manoel . The main subjects of its pieces are love, satire and
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epigram, and most of them are written in the
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national redondilha verse, but the metre is irregular and the rhyming careless . The
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Spanish language is largely employed, because the
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literary progenitors of the whole collection were Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, Boscan and Garcilasso . As a
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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 .

At other times these poetical soirees took the

form of a
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mock trial at law, in which the queen of John II. acted as judge . Resende was much twitted by other rhymesters on his corpulence, but he repaid all their gibes with
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interest . The
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artistic value of the Cancioneiro Geral is slight . Conventional in tone, the greater
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part are imitations of Spanish poets and show no trace of inspiration in their authors . The Cancioneiro is redeemed from
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complete insipidity by Resende himself, and his
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fine verses on the death of D . Ignez de Castro inspired the
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great
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episode in the Lusiads of Camoens (q.v.) . Resende is the compiler of a gossiping chronicle of his
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patron John II., which, though plagiarized from the chronicle by Ruy de Pina (q.v.), has a value of its own . The past lives again in these pages, and though Resende's anecdotes may be unimportant in themselves, they reveal much of the inner
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life of the 15th century . Resende's Miscellanea, a rhymed commentary on the most notable events of his time, which is annexed to his Chronicle, is a document full of
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historical interest, and as a poem not without merit . The
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editions of his Chronicle are those of 1545, 1554, 1596, 1607, 1622, 1752 and 1798 . His Cancioneiro appeared in 1516, and was reprinted by Kausler at
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Stuttgart in 3 vols., 1846-52 . A new edition has recently come from the university press at
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Coimbra .

For a

critical study of his
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work, see Excerptos, seguidos de uma noticia sobre sua vida e obras, um juizo critico, apreciafao de bellezas e defeitos e estudo da lingua, by Antonio de Castilho (Paris, 1865) . Also As sepulturas do Espinheiro, by Anselmo Braamcamp, Freire Lisbon, 1901, passim, especially pp . 67-80, where the salient
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dates in Resende's life are set out from documents recently discovered; and Dr Sousa
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Viterbo, Diccionario dos Architectos . . . Portuguezes, ii . 361-74 . (E .

End of Article: GARCIA DE RESENDE (1470-1536)
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