Baroque Art and Literature: Themes, Styles, and Key Figures
The Ideology of the Baroque Period
The Baroque is the artistic expression of a worldview and a certain attitude to life. Sociohistorical difficulties resulted in a pessimistic vision and feeling of disappointment.
Baroque Culture
The crisis of the 17th century coincided with a period of great splendor, along with the cultural renaissance known as the Golden Age. Cultural events of this period were influenced by the Counter-Reformation. The Catholic principles of monarchy and privileged groups were devoted to the practice of cultural patronage. Official culture was in the hands of universities and colleges. The majority of the population was illiterate, which explains the rise of religious instruction through sermons, pictures, and festivals.
Baroque Festivals and Theater
Baroque festivals reflect this culture’s tendency to show off, and theater experienced a boom.
Baroque Poetry
Themes in Baroque Poetry
Baroque poetry continued to cultivate previous themes with an intensification of expressive resources, dominated by texts that express disappointment and a consciousness of crisis. The most general feature is the diversity of subjects:
- Love poetry: The Renaissance idea of love survives, with physical descriptions of the beloved.
- Moral and philosophical poetry: Marked by pessimism, disappointment, the contrast between reality and appearance, and the transience of life. Stoic ideas and the need for a virtuous life are recovered.
- Religious poetry: Poetry of celebration, spiritual reflection, and repentance prevails.
- Burlesque poetry: Parodic and humorous poetry.
Formal Aspects of Baroque Poetry
Metrics: Revaluation of minor art, especially the octosyllabic, *seguidillas*, *carols*, and *ballads* grouped into quatrains; introduction of refrains and the *silva*.
Concept and Expressive Resources: The basic concept is a deep thinking that is expressed in rhetorical devices such as metaphor, comparison and paraphrase, use of antithesis, oxymorons, paradoxes, puns, and hyperbole.
Key Figures in Baroque Poetry
Luis de Góngora
Góngora practiced minor art poetry (Moorish romances, pastoral, historical, and burlesque; *letrillas* stand out) and Petrarchan poetry (sonnets [of incitement to the theme of love and joy, others burlesque, and others that treat of disappointment and the transience of life] and longer poems [its main theme is love, but pastoral reasons stand out]).
Style: Góngora’s style is characterized by difficulty, mythological allusions, and accumulation of lexical resources. He uses alliteration and paronomasia extensively and employs complex prayers, dominated by cultism, associations, and metaphors related to color and music.
Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega was a man of great poetic creation. His works include Italianate compositions, minor art poetry, romances (he was one of the creators of new romances), Petrarchan poetry (including sonnets), and religious poetry (rhymes collected in sacred sonnets and other poems of devotion).
Style: Vega’s style contains influences from all previous literature. He follows the Renaissance classical model while also revealing his interest in the concept and trying to imitate Góngora.
Quevedo
Poetic Themes: Quevedo wrote poems of major and minor art, romantic poetry (with roots in lyrical, classical, and Petrarchan poetry; reason = unapproachable beauty of the beloved, suffering and tears of the lover), moral and metaphysical poetry (influenced by Christian morality and Stoic ideas, demonstrating a profound disappointment; the author reflects on the brevity and transience of life, inevitable death, and the fact that life is going to die), satirical and burlesque poetry (critical of human types, habits, and social issues), and religious poetry (combines themes of morality with religious poetry; one of the most important is repentance; in others, he reflects on the Passion of Christ).
Style: Quevedo used rhetorical resources, highlighting metaphors, comparisons, antitheses, and contrasts. In burlesque poetry, he aimed to produce cartoons and provoke laughter. In serious style, he highlighted lexical worship, hyperbatons, and an admonishing tone.
Baroque Prose
Baroque narrative prose was cultured, intellectual, and didactic, with the *picaresque* novel being moralizing. Additionally, it includes the pastoral novel, Byzantine novel, and *cortesana* novel. Short didactic prose works include history, political writing, and religious writing.