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This paper opens with an excursus on Spanish authors that practise Hispano-ltalian heteroglossia in their works during Pre- and Early Renaissance. In the Hispano-ltalian field, the Italian and bilingual compositions of Francisco de Figueroa play an absolute important role for the description of the event. The essay focuses on the analysis of the distinctive literary forms that heteroglossia —which in this case the author defines “literary biglossia"— takes in the Spanish poet's Italian works in relation to his own literary production in Spanish and to the Petrarchan and Italian tradition. In fact, next to writers that occasionally adopt the “other language" of the “other culture", the “biglossia" is the modality of those fully belonging to both languages and both cultures, since they experiment with forms, whether or not innovative, that mark a milestone in the development of those cultures. Different levels of analysis from metrics to meaning offer a preferential view of this anomalous artistic process, searching for the deep reasons behind a great poet's choice to write in another language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]