15th-Century Spanish Literature: Genres and Styles
Literary Genres of the 15th Century
In the 15th century, earlier literary genres continued to be cultivated alongside some new developments. Epic poems and poems by clergy disappeared, replaced by a resurgence of old ballads that revitalized and enriched the epic form.
Important literary events were linked to courtly environments. Under courtly influence, educated lyric poetry developed, and interest in folk songs (carols) increased. Cultic drama reappeared, and prose took on historical and didactic forms.
The Popular Narrative Poetry – Traditional
The Old Ballad-Epic
Romance lyrics are compositions that arose from the fragmentation of ancient epics. Others argue that romances are the creative effort of individuals, and the oldest samples of the genre are lyrical or fictional, not epic (individualistic thesis).
Topics
- National Historic: Derived from old Castilian epics and exalted heroes (Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar).
- Romantic and Lyrical: Popular.
- Fronterizos: Created by the imagination and Moors; episodes of warfare on the border between Moorish and Christian kingdoms in the 14th and 15th centuries. The protagonist is typically Christian, and the antagonist Muslim.
- Carolingios: Focus on the figure of Charlemagne and related characters and events.
- Bretones: Inspired by the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Metric
Similar to epics in value. It consists of an infinite series of eight-syllable verses that rhyme in assonance, and odd pairs are loose.
Style
It incorporates linguistic traits of the epic and oral language formulas, showing unmistakable stylistic peculiarities:
- Tendency to the Fragmentary: It sticks to the essentials without exposing the history of accidents, and at the time of greatest dramatic intensity, the end of the story is truncated (abrupt end).
- Tendency to Repetition: Repeated phonemes (alliteration), identical words (rhetorical repetition), and repeated phrases or sentence structures (parallelism).
- Freedom Temporary: Use of verbs highlights the following: “Imperfect subjunctive preterite worth (there answered the Moor)” – In dialogues instead of conditional future – Imperfect indicative rather than present. This achieves an atmosphere of temporal imprecision.
The Literate Lyrics: The Poetry of the Songbook
Cancionero Poetry
A set of compositions belonging to poets associated with the court and collected in large anthologies (songbooks). Cancionero poetry deals with themes of love, moral reflection (fortune, death…), and satire. Its metric forms are formed by…
Moral Reflection: Coplas by Jorge Manrique
Representative Work: Couplets
An elegy for the death of his father, Jorge Manrique, a moral-didactic poem in which the author, after the death of Master Don Rodrigo Manrique, evokes and celebrates his figure.
Metrics
Manrique employs the couplet, twelve verses grouped into two sextuplets with a broken foot. Octosyllabic except for the 3rd and 6th verses (tetrasílabos). The rhyme is consonant and is distributed: abcabc / …
Structure
The book is divided into three parts:
- The first establishes some general reflections on the transience of human life and the inconsistency of worldly goods, subject to fortune, disability, and the passage of time.
- The second provides examples of prominent figures of the past, all victims of these three agents.
- The third contains the praises of the deceased and their encounter with death.
The poem configures a cluster of extra grounds departing from the flow of tradition. Topics that express truths universally accepted in the Middle Ages. Jorge Manrique, from his own human experience, recreates those issues, and the result is a work that moves by its authenticity and emotion:
- The World as a Place of Transit: Man has the opportunity to achieve the salvation of his soul. Temporary stay, so one must not cling to it, and this detachment is to be shown by the resignation of earthly possessions (topic of the contempt of the world).
- Fortuna: Blind chance triggers human tragedies. It’s hasty and volatile, a pagan interpretation consistent with the resurgence of classical antiquity.
- Death: Picks up a tradition that had repeatedly been stressing its power. Equalizing, democratic sense, unpredictable, inappropriate, destructive power, inevitable, gruesome, cruel.
- Ubí Sunt: Exemplifies the transience of worldly goods by resorting to the rhetorical convention of the ubi sunt, which is to ask about powerful figures of the past who have died.
The Prose and the Novel
In the 15th century, prose and the novel took on peculiar manifestations.
5.1 Humanistic Prose
In prose, the humanistic trend intensified in the 15th century with the spread of classical culture. In the historical genre, the following stand out:
- Political chronicles of the reigns of Juan II, Henry IV, and the Catholic Monarchs.
- Biographies, both individual and collective.
Satirical Genre
The most important work is Corbacho or Reproof of Worldly Love by Alfonso Martinez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera. Through fierce criticism of female weaknesses, it castigates human love, blaming it for moral degeneration and sin.
5.2 The Novel and Amorous Sentimentality
The 15th-century novel is suffused with amorous sentimentality. Novels of chivalry continued to be written. Two new genres emerged:
- a. The Historical Novel: Recreates matters of national history, taken from the epic. The characters seem drawn from 15th-century courtly society. The first Spanish historical novel is the Chronicle of Sarracino by Pedro del Corral.
- b. Sentimental Novel: The action unfolds slowly, is autobiographical, with careful analysis of the feelings of lovers. Significant works: Servant of Free Love by Juan Rodríguez del Padrón and Prison of Love by Diego de San Pedro.
8.3 Religious Drama
Theater takes two forms: mysteries and moralities.
- Mysteries put on stage themes from the Bible.
- Moralities are allegorical plays in which abstract realities are personified, such as humility, honor, poverty, etc.
Within profane theater, the genre of farce achieved great success in France. Its comic and satirical character is taken from fabliaux and Italian stories. The masterpiece of the genre is the Farce of Master Pathelin (1464), of unknown authorship.