La «cansada Musa» de Gabriel Lasso de la Vega. Escritura épica y legitimación autorial en la <i>Primera parte de Cortés valeroso</i> (1588) y <i>Mexicana</i> (1594)

Abstract This essay examines Gabriel Lasso de la Vega's epic project on the conquest of Mexico, which had two versions: Primera parte de Cortés valeroso y Mexicana , published in 1588, which the author rewrote and published in 1594 under the title Mexicana . The study focuses on the first-person narrator's interventions to analyze how Lasso de la Vega presents the exhaustion he feels in sticking to a narrative of events close to historical discourse and how, through a respectful yet ambitious imitation, he offers a different response from Alonso de Ercilla to introduce variety and fiction. Through the narrative twist introduced in the 1588 poem, which clears the path leading to Mexicana , Lasso accommodates the latest theoretical approaches and poetic models, adopting a strategy that provides a heroic idea of the poetic task. From the perspective of self-affirmation writing, his work constitutes a prominent example of late-century epic writing and the aspiration, through its cultivation, to literary and social authority.