Introduction:
The poetry of this period is divided in two schools: the Salmantine (e.g. Fray Luis de León) and the Sevillian (e.g. Fernando de Herrera).

The Salmantine School has as distinguishing characteristics:
-concise language;
-ideas expressed simply;
-realistic themes;
-preference for short verse; and

However, the Sevillian school is:
-grandiloquent;
-extremely polished;
-focussed on meditation rather than feeling, more about documentation than about observation of nature and life;
-composed of long, complex verses; and
-filled with adjectives and rhetorical language.

However, this second school served as immediate base and necessary bridge to connect with the poetic movements that in the 17th century were included under the general denomination of Baroque.
-The Renaissance lyric is originated from:
-The tradition, which perpetuates themes and forms of the medieval lyric. This tradition is made up of the traditional lyric, oral and popular (carols, love songs...) and the not-written lyric transmitted by the Romancero, as much as of the cultured lyric (of authors like Juan de Mena or Marqués de Santillana) and the courtesan lyric of troubadour roots gathered in the song books of which the most famous was the one of Hernando de Acuña. This traditional poetry is bound to the use of the short verse, specially eight syllabes.
-The innovating current rooted in Petrarca and therefore italianizing, that will mature thanks to Boscán and Garcilaso. This current drinks in fact of the same sources as the previous one: the Provençal lyric. They handle therefore the same conception of the love as a service that dignifies the enamored one.

Its characteristics are:
-Concerning the metric used, verses (eleven syllabes), strophes (lyre) and poems (sonnet) coming from Italy are adopted. Characteristic genres as the égloga (the protagonists are idealized shepherds), ode (for serious matters) or the epistle (poem in form of letter) also appear.
-The language at this time is dominated by the naturalness and simplicity, fleeing from the affectation and the carefully searched phrase. Thus the lexicon and the syntax are simple.
-The subjects preferred by the Renaissance poetry are, fundamentally, the love, conceived from the platonic point of view; the nature, as something idyllic (bucolic); pagan mythology, of which histories of Gods are reflected; and the feminine beauty, always following the same classical ideal. In relation to these mentioned subjects, several Renaissance topics exist, some of them taken from the classical world:
-The Carpe Diem, whose translation would be "catch the day" or "take advantage of the moment". With it the enjoyment of the life before the arrival of the oldness is advised.
-The feminine beauty, described always following the same scheme: young blonde, of clear, calm eyes, of white skin, red lips, rosy cheeks, etc.
-The Beatus Ille or praise of the life in the field, apart from the material world, as opposed to the life in the city, with its dangers and intrigues.
-The Locus amoenus or description of a perfect and idyllic nature.

With respect to imitation and originality in the Renaissance poetry, the Renaissance poet used the models of the nature; on this base he did not put into doubt the necessity of imitating, because these procedures were justified by coming not from the reproduction of models, but from the same spirit that gathered other thoughts. If other people's creations, unavoidably dispersed because of being multiple, are recasted into a unique creation, and if the spirit of the writer shines in it, nobody will be able to deny the qualification of original to it. There was a self-satisfaction component, since the sources gave prestige to the one that discovered them. Those searches mostly meant a struggle between the old and the modern, to exhibit the own culture. The writer of the time assumed the imitation as the center of his activity. The absolute originality constituted a remote ideal that was not refused, but it was not postulated to themselves demandingly, because it was a privilege granted to very little people, and in addition the possibility of reaching it with imitative means existed. In the imitation one must go to several sources that must be transformed and reduced to unit.