Poetry and Truth in the Spanish Works of Fray Luis de Leon

A study of the mentality of the 16c Spanish writer, Fray Luis de Leon. Luis de Leon, poet and Biblical exegete, lived from 1527 to 1591. The study attempts to explain the impression received from his prose and verse works that he intended them to conform to what he believed to exist in Nature, society, and the spiritual world, but that he gave equal attention to their aesthetic form, i.e. the figures and fictions they contain. The following questions are posed: does Fray Luis make any distinction between truth and fiction inthe content of his works, or between poetic language and logical language in their form? If so, does he use any consistent criteria for these distinctions?