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Apologetic in favor of Don Luis de Góngora de Espinosa Medrano (El Lunarejo)

Authors: El Lunarejo, Juan de Espinosa Medrano

His contemporaries knew him as El Lunarejo. Juan de Espinosa Medrano (1630? – 1688)  was probably born at the town of Calcauso, part of the Doctrine of the Bishopry of Cuzco that today belongs to the Department of Apurimac. We ignore information about his parents’ biography and formative years. Nevertheless he studied in the Seminar San Antonio Abad (Cuzco) where he was professor of arts and theology. In 1654, he obtained his doctorate in theology in the Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, of the Company of Jesus

The Apologético en favor de don Luis de Góngora is for many academics more than a poem in defense of Góngora, an attack to the Portuguese publisher Manuel de Faria e Sousa (Publisher of Os Lusiadas, poem of most famous Portuguese poet Luys de Camoes). Góngora, who was born in Cordoba, is considered by Espinosa, prince of the Spanish lyric poets on the cover of his book. (“Príncipe de los poetas líricas de España”). Although Espinosa Medrano wrote his Apologético when the Góngora controversy had finished, his text has a great importance for the study of the literary theory in the Hispanic America; for checking the scope of classical culture in Peru (many Greek-Latin authors are quoted and commented by Espinosa); and, certainly, for consolidating the Creole way of thinking in the seventeenth century.