18th Century Cultural Movement: The Enlightenment and The Baroque
The Enlightenment
Illustration: It was an 18th-century cultural movement that dispelled the ‘darkness’ of earlier centuries (Baroque, pessimism) with reason and human intelligence. It is thus called the Age of Enlightenment. This cultural movement developed mainly in France, Germany, and England, spreading across Europe and affecting Spain. The ideological principles of the Enlightenment are based on the rationalism of Kant, critical thinking, the search for scientific truth, and education and culture. The latter was intended to eliminate or mitigate the high rates of illiteracy, thanks to the significant development of the bourgeoisie, promoting industry, commerce, education, public works, and agriculture. Similarly, one of its goals was to achieve public education.
As for literature, the general communicative intention was didactic (teaching) and the restoration of classical formal principles. It is also called Neoclassicism. The genres of the same, at this time, proliferated as authors are concerned. In the lyric genre, the fable subgenre dominated, highlighting Samaniego and Iriarte. The fable is a short story in prose or verse with a moralistic intention, in which the characters are usually animals.
The drama of the Enlightenment emphasized, with the play ‘The Young Lady’, Leandro Fernández de Moratinos, which tells the story of an arranged marriage that remains unrealized because the man gives it up as it goes against his principles. Finally, the essay (literary prose whose purpose is to present and discuss a particular issue) highlights three main authors: Cadalso with ‘Moroccan Letters’ (critique of Spanish society), Benito Jerónimo Feijoo with ‘Universal Critical Theatre’, and Jovellanos and his texts in which he speaks of the problems of Spanish society.
Glossary
Exemplary Novels
These are twelve novellas by Cervantes, which address various issues such as infidelity and jealousy, love, madness, etc. Some are more idealistic, with characters and higher language, while others are more realistic, with lower social environments and characters with more popular and familiar speech.
Starters
These are one-act plays written by Cervantes, short and mostly in prose, often inspired by popular literature. In these works, Cervantes presents a variety of Spanish life with four characters and abounds in social satire.
Autos Sacramentales
This is a genuinely Spanish drama. They are verse plays that take place in one event and have an allegorical character, as their characters symbolize virtues, passions, or abstract concepts, used to extol the sacrament of the Eucharist. Their staging was sumptuous and solemn, with great ostentation and stage machinery. They were usually represented in the Corpus Christi festival and other religious holidays.
The Baroque
During this period, Spain remained one of the great European powers, but continuous external and internal conflicts led to political and economic decline, causing the decline of the Spanish empire in European politics as a colonial power.
The Baroque from the Economic Point of View
The severe economic crisis caused by the mismanagement of wealth from America by the Spanish kings and their ministers, war spending, and loans, is one of the most important causes of the country’s decline and the social crisis.
The Baroque from a Social Point of View
During the Baroque period, the concept and social value of the old Christian’s blood purity continued. Converts tried to hide their origins, and the expulsion of the Moors had a severe effect on the agricultural economy.
The Baroque from a Religious Point of View
During this period, the Church and the Inquisition continued to watch over Catholic orthodoxy, and the ideology became a medieval theocentrism.
The Baroque from a Cultural Point of View
In the Baroque, resurgent medieval ideological and cultural aspects revitalized the desire to show the fragility of reality and meditation on death. The optimism of rebirth was replaced by a pessimistic attitude toward reality and life, and there were new artistic and literary themes: political and social disillusionment, deception of human expectations, ideological and cultural rebirth, pessimism due to the social and economic crisis, the obsession with the inexorable passage of time viewed with despair, the futility of our existence, the sense of an illusory reality, the folly of the world, and national decline.
Glossary
Décima
A décima is a verse composed of ten eight-syllable lines. It is one of the most rooted and widespread strophic forms throughout Latin America. Today we use this word in the specific sense of a décima espinela (spinel), which takes its name from the poet Vicente Espinel, from the late 16th century. Espinel’s contribution was setting the structure of rhymes in a décima as abbaaccddc. Additionally, pauses can only occur after the even-numbered lines, particularly after the fourth.
The Redondilla
The redondilla is a stanza of four lines, with odd lines being heptasyllabic and even lines being pentasyllabic, and therefore of minor art. The rhyme is assonant.
Góngora
(1561-1627) was born in Cordoba into an illustrious family. He studied at the University of Salamanca and returned to his hometown, where he held a position in the cathedral. By age 50, he became a priest and, thanks to the protection of the Duke of Lerma, he moved to Madrid as a chaplain in his honor. He was always unfriendly and arrogant with other writers. With some of them, he maintained bitter controversies, especially with Quevedo.
Quevedo
He was born in Madrid. After studying in Alcalá and Valladolid, his life was linked to the court and political activity. He spent some time in Italy with the Duke of Osuna, who, having fallen out of favor with the king, took him with him, so he was banished to his possession of the Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real). In his later years, by order of the Count-Duke of Olivares and without knowing the cause, he suffered imprisonment for a period in the jail of San Marcos de León.