The Myth of Orpheus as a Space of Aesthetic Dispute in Juan de Jáuregui: Imitation, Dialogue, and Critique of Gongorism

Abstract

This article examines the aesthetic and polemical relationship between Juan de Jáuregui and Luis de Góngora. Scholars argue that Orfeo (1624) does not represent a submission to the Gongorine model, but rather a critical response that transforms its procedures from within a classicist poetics. Although it shares with Góngora certain formal traits, Jáuregui moderates and rationalizes them, subordinating artifice to the principles of clarity and harmony. The myth of Orpheus allows the author to develop a reflection on the cathartic power of art and on the poet’s role as mediator between nature and divinity. Orpheus, as a symbol of ordering music and moral beauty, embodies the ideal of the poet that Jáuregui opposes to Góngora’s verbal experimentalism and deliberate obscurity. In this sense, the poem integrates a sumptuous and musical lexicon that, far from being mere ornament, acquires a symbolic and ethical function. Thus, Jáuregui’s Orfeo stands as an example of Baroque aemulatio: Jáuregui does not imitate Góngora, but rather engages in a dialogue with him to construct his own poetics, in which inspiration and discipline converge in a harmonious and rational vision of art.