At this point, their database, called “Bibliografía de la Poesía Aurea,” contains 93,000 poems with cross references culled from 1,270 sources from 78 libraries in 14 countries.
Love is the dominant theme, DiFranco says. “They go from one extreme to another, from sentimental love to platonic, abstract love, to erotic love or sex,” he said. Compilers would sometimes put a religious poem right next to an erotic one.
“It was a case of, ‘Better put it in there before we lose it,’” he says.
Professional writers didn’t really exist during the Golden Age, DiFranco says. Many of those who wrote were soldiers, sailors or university students who formed poetry societies.
Apart from the database, DiFranco and Labrador Herraiz have collaborated on 25 publications, including four volumes of works written or translated by a very prolific writer-turned-monk named Pedro de Padilla.
There’s still plenty of work left to do, according to Labrador Herraiz, who won the José Vasconcelos award in 2008. The award is named after the Mexican writer-philosopher. The Golden Age “is so large and unknown that we will need hundreds of researchers for many, many years to make it known,” he says.
