Baroque Literature in 17th Century Spain: Styles & Key Authors
Baroque Literature in 17th Century Spain
The Baroque: Thought and Literature
Baroque Mentality
Baroque mentality is characterized by a sense of skepticism and pessimism, considered critical due to the political, economic, and social development of Spain. This is reflected in the following points:
- Disillusionment with the World: The beauty of reality is a mere appearance, deceit, and lies. Only the ugliness of man’s life is misery, full of sorrow and weakness. A negative view of everything human.
- Fear of the Passage of Time: Time inexorably destroys everything material, making life short and fleeting.
- Obsession with the Unavoidable Presence of Death: Pessimism and fear of death. Sometimes it resolves in resigned and stoic acceptance, and other times in distress and rebellion.
Baroque Literature
- Forms of Expression: Forms remain the same as in the Renaissance but are gradually exaggerated and twisted. A loss of balance and harmony of classicism.
- Contrast Technique: Antitheses are matched: the beautiful and the ugly, etc. This technique leads to two aspects:
- Deformation and caricature of reality, degrading and debasing it.
- Idealization and embellishment of even the most ordinary and commonplace.
- Another important feature is hyperbole, used in the two areas identified, either in the degradation and mockery of reality or in its idealization.
- Literary Language: Far from the simplicity of the Renaissance, the aim is to create a completely different language, full of wit and language proficiency, resulting in a brilliant but difficult style for the reader.
This language is expressed in two seemingly opposing tendencies, but they are two different manifestations of a common intention: to avoid the common name of things, to demonstrate wit and difficulty. These tendencies are Culteranismo and Conceptismo.
Culteranismo
It is named for the abundant use of cultismos (erudite words): lexical and syntactic Latinisms (hyperbaton), and mythological allusions.
Its chief representative is Góngora, after whom the style is also named Gongorismo.
It mainly seeks formal beauty through a highly cultured language. Added to Conceptismo is the profusion of ornamental resources and learned, Latinizing devices.
The difficulty of the concept itself is joined by formal complication. In addition, a strong classical scholarship is needed.
Key Features of Culteranismo
- Syntax: Latinizing resources such as hyperbaton, ablative absolutes, complicated structures, long periods, numerous subsections, enumerations, symmetry, and correlations.
- Glossary:
- Many cultismos are used primarily for their sound and ornamental value.
- Sensory vocabulary with a colorful essence. Color is associated with precious and noble metals, leading to a luxurious language.
- Literary Figures: Richness in metaphors, almost always pure and very bold and original. Other figures include hyperbole, circumlocution, antithesis, and word games, shared with Conceptismo, that contribute to ingenious relationships.
- Mythology: Allusions to classical mythology, such as similes or comparisons, which hinder understanding but beautify and ennoble the poetic language.
Conceptismo
Its chief representative is Quevedo, and it appears in both prose and verse.
It essentially seeks expressive density, suggesting many contents in a few words through ingenious associations between words and ideas.
Key Features of Conceptismo
- Lexicon: It does not use cultismos but creates new words by composition or derivation (e.g., archipobre, protomiseria).
- Syntax: Concise summarization, eliminating the unnecessary, and short sentences.
- Violation of Grammatical Rules: Formation of superlatives on nouns (e.g., naricísimo), substantive use of adjectives, implying a clever association.
- Stylistic Devices: Hyperbole, puns (polysemy or double meanings), paronomasia, and metaphors.