Baroque Period: Literature, Poetry, and Key Authors

Posted on Feb 4, 2025 in Music

Characteristics of the Baroque Period

The Baroque, the historical and cultural period immediately following the Renaissance, continued and concluded its artistic renewal but also represented a reaction to its aesthetic and ideological principles. The Baroque era was not just a historical phase but also a general movement in society. Renaissance optimism disappeared in the Baroque: ideals and art lost balance, serenity vanished, and anxiety was introduced into society.

Baroque literature adopted and repeated Renaissance themes, showing the emptiness of their content and presenting the form of deception or illusion, as reflected by a mirror, to demonstrate the loss of faith in humanity and the devaluation of their world. Therefore, there was no complete break between the Renaissance and the Baroque, but rather a change, a natural evolution.

Baroque thinking clearly expressed its disappointment with the world through three positions:

  1. Confrontation and rebellion.
  2. Evasion through content inherited from the Renaissance.
  3. Conformism and coexistence with the situation.

The result of these attitudes was a vital contrast.

The main themes of the Baroque are:

  • Epic, romantic, and mythological, a legacy of the Renaissance.
  • Religious, moral, and political, fruits of Baroque disillusionment.
  • Picaresque and satirical, social criticism or disillusionment.
  • National-historical or legendary.

Baroque writers sought, above all, originality, creative individuality, and rhetorical surprise.

Poetry: Baroque Themes

Regarding the themes, two sections can be distinguished:

Renaissance Themes Developed in Accordance with the Baroque Attitude

  1. Love acquired a transcendent meaning.
  2. Nature became an object of moralization.
  3. Mythology served as a benchmark in two ways: either as a noble subject or as a rhetorical game.

Baroque Themes that Grew out of Disillusionment and Pessimism

  1. Time and the brevity of life.
  2. The dream became a symbol of life and death.
  3. The mirror as a symbol of disappointment.
  4. The problem of Spain, which summarized the political environment.

Luis de Góngora

The culterano lyric poets conceived poetry as a complex of sharp contrasts that break the balance between form and content. Among its features are:

  1. Great musicality.
  2. Use of metaphor.
  3. Cultism and rhythmic sound.
  4. Potentiation of mythological subjects.
  5. Syntactic complication.

The creator of this trend was Luis de Góngora. Two styles are distinguished in his poetry: a popular and traditional type, and another more cultured one. His masterpieces are the poems Solitudes and Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, in which our language reaches a peak of formal grandeur.

Lope de Vega

Félix Lope de Vega was born in Madrid. He resorted to the most diverse forms, harmonizing the brilliance and subtlety of culterano concepts. In his time, he created a poetry of life experience, merging the reality of life and poetry. He cultivated learned, epic, and traditional poetry.

Francisco de Quevedo

The most important figure of conceptismo, Francisco de Quevedo, was born in Madrid in 1580. His poems covered the extreme overtones of the human soul, with his character oriented in two directions:

  • A sustained interest in idealization and the superhuman world.
  • A sustained interest in the subhuman and plebeian world.