“Para conmunicación y passatiempo de amigos”: The Treze questiones and the Arcadia Translations as Cultural Capital in Sixteenth-Century Spain

Many have considered the sixteenth-century Spanish translations of the Treze questiones from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Filocolo and Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia as important contributors to the presence of Italian literature and genres in early modern Spain. The production of the texts, however, owes as much to questions of personal prestige and patronage in the context of imperial Spain’s growing presence in the Italian Peninsula. The translations are used as cultural capital first by Toledo’s elite intellectual community, where they support communal reading practices linked to the cigarrales. Later, as print editions, they become agents in the portrayal of the cultural and linguistic sophistication of the Spanish Empire. In Toledo, the print editions are packaged as authoritative, corrected versions of canonical texts. In Venice, the Toledan packaging of the translations takes on a broader dimension as the cultural capital of an empire abroad.