Career
After attending the University of Salamanca, where he paid less attention to the study of law than to gaming and other amusements, Gongora returned to Cordoba about 1585, where he took minor orders. Eventually he accepted a post with the Inquisition which required him to travel to all parts of Spain to investigate the religious antecedents of suspected persons. His convivial disposition and his strong vein of irony in these early years are reflected in his light and satirical verse. In 1617, with most of his best-known works written and his poetic reputation at court already established, Gongora moved to Madrid where, with the support of the Duke of Lerma and another royal favorite, Rodrigo de Calderon, he was ordained a priest in the same year and later appointed chaplain to Philip III. In Madrid, Gongora engaged in the bitter polemic which raged around his new and difficult poetic style, culteranismo. He was furiously attacked by Lope de Vega and Quevedo among other writers and wrote satirical sonnets in return; the result was a long and virulent literary battle. On May 23, 1627, after a period in which he had lost his memory, he died of a stroke in Córdoba.Cordoba.
The first edition of Gongora's poetical works was printed in the year of his death although they had been widely read in manuscript long before that time. Beneath the overall incisiveness and precision of his style there can be discerned, if not two periods, at least two basic characteristics, one arising from his interest in the popular and festive and the other based on his use of sheer poetic wit to create an ultimate beauty of verbal structure. In the former type may be included such poems as the letrilla beginning "Andeme yo caliente y ríaseriase la gente" ("If I go warm let them laugh as they will") and his many ballads. In the latter type belong what are considered the two major works of his style of culteranismo, the FábulaFabula de Polifemo y Galatea (c. 1613) and the famous Soledades (c. 1613) (The Solitudes of Don Luis de Gongora, 1931).