ABSTRACT
Categories like fiction and non-fiction are far from being universal and they were by no means clearly differentiated in sixteenth-century Spain. Romances of chivalry and sentimental novels were in many ways hybrids, bridging the gap between the categories of History and Poetry. In the Golden Age defence of poetry, the theoretical clarification and vindication of the concepts of “verisimilitude” and “imitation” became key. These are, of course, highly pertinent to historical prose as well as to historical poetry and historical drama. The multifaceted Platonic challenge to poetry being thus laid to rest, the rest of the Philosophy can concern itself with what a “noble art” might then look like in practice. While its theory of poetry is unequivocally metaphysical, the form of Carvallo’s treatise adds a certain dynamism and prevents the Swan from becoming sheer panegyric.
