Baroque Art: Ideology, Poetry, and Prose
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 fiestas.
The Baroque fiesta reflects this culture’s tendency to show off, and the theater experienced a boom.
Baroque Poetry
Themes
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, along with the physical description of the beloved.
- Moral and Philosophical Poetry: Marked by pessimism, dominated by disappointment, the contrast between reality and appearance, the transience of life, recovery of Stoic ideas, and the need for a virtuous life.
- Religious Poetry: Celebration prevails, along with spiritual reflection and repentance.
- Burlesque Poetry: Parodic and humorous character.
Formal Aspects
Metric: Revaluation of minor art, especially the octosyllabic, seguidillas, carols, and ballads grouped into quatrains; introduction of refrains and the silva.
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, dilogias, puns, and hyperbole.
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
His style is characterized by difficulty, mythological allusions, and accumulation of lexical resources. He uses cult alliteration and paronomasias. He employs extensive and complex prayers, dominated by cultism, related associations, and metaphors with color and music.
Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega was a man of great poetic creation capacity. His works include Italianate compositions, minor art and poetry, romances (one of the creators of new romances), Petrarchan poetry (including sonnets), and religious poetry (rhymes collected sacred sonnets and other poems of devotion).
Style
His style contains influences of all previous literature. He follows the Renaissance classical model while revealing his interest in the concept and trying to imitate Góngora.
Quevedo
Poetic Themes
Quevedo wrote poems of major and minor art, romantic poetry (roots in lyrical, classical poetry, 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, life is going to die), satirical and burlesque poetry (critical of human types and habits and social), 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
He 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
Narrative poetry was cultured, intellectual, and didactic, with moralizing picaresque elements. Additionally, it includes the pastoral novel, Byzantine novel, and courtesan novel. Short didactic prose works include history, political works, and religious works.