Abstract
Excerpt: This anthology assembles 228 sonnets from early modern Spain and the Spanish colonies. The manuscript collection known as Flores de baria poesía (1577) is, as Arias’s title indicates, a principal source for more than a quarter of these sonnets, and the latter half of the sixteenth century is most heavily represented, though the wider sampling encompasses poets ranging from Garcilaso to Sor Juana. Contrary to what the anthology’s title might lead one to believe, not all of the sonnets come from ‘cancioneros’. Sonnets from Don Quijote and Quevedo’s Heráclito cristiano, for example, also make an appearance. After a brief prologue by José J. Labrador Herraiz and Ralph A. DiFranco, the first section of the anthology comprises sonnets plucked from Flores; the editor further subdivides and reorders the sonnets from Flores according to the descriptive categories listed in his title. The rest of the volume repeats this pattern of categories and orders the sonnets within each ‘apartado temático’ in accordance with a loose and rather arbitrary chronology based on each author’s year of death, if known. Brief bibliographical and biographical notes, often repetitive, accompany many of the sonnets, and the final pages offer useful indices of first lines, authors, and sources.