Gongora, the Moriscos, and the falconry episode of the Soledades

Among scholars of Spanish Baroque poetry, the dominant opinion has been that the writer Luis de Gongora was silent, indifferent, or even supportive in the face of the forced exile of the Moriscos, the "New Christian" descendants of converts from Islam. This essay instead takes the minority position that Gongora opposed the expulsion, thus mirroring his Andalusian patrons and his humanist mentor Pedro de Valencia. Specifically, in his long lyric poem the Soledades, Gongora encodes opposition to the expulsion in the falconry scene and reinforces the connection between the cantos through the theme of parental grief, elaborated as well in his fragmentary but systematic allusions to Claudian's Rape of Proserpine.