Golden Age Literature: Renaissance & Baroque in Spain
Golden Age: Renaissance and Baroque Revival
Diverse and Contradictory Currents
Renaissance thought is shaped by humanism and classical culture. Born in Italian city-states aspiring to become republics, the movement emphasized rhetoric for persuasion and pedagogy.
Baroque Characteristics
The Baroque is marked by mistrust and fear of social decay, reflected in themes of disillusionment and life as a dream. Honor, echoing the divide between private and public life, is another recurring theme. In Spain, the Baroque was a period of conservatism. While Renaissance aesthetics valued naturalness, the Baroque embraced artifice.
Both periods saw a shift in literary conceptions and language. Writers favored the Silver Age of Latin (Seneca, Martial, Tacitus, Lucan, Pliny) over the Golden Age (Cicero, Virgil, Horace).
Poetry of the Golden Age (1511-16th Century)
Early Period (1511-1543)
Poetry initially followed cancionero themes, genres, and verses, with courtly love as the central theme.
Renaissance Influence (1543-1580)
New Renaissance poetry, influenced by Italian currents, introduced new versification, genres, and themes. Petrarchan poetry and classical tradition shaped these themes and motifs. Petrarch’s influence is seen in structure, themes, metrics, and stylistic devices. Classical forms like the ode and elegy of love were revived, with Virgil, Ovid, and Horace as models.
Innovative Poetic Forms
- Sonnet: Two quartets and two triplets with variable rhymes, typically on the theme of love.
- Petrarchan Song: Several stanzas (placements) of hendecasyllables and heptasyllables.
- Terza Rima: Used in elegies, epistles, and satires.
- Octava Real: The epic and narrative verse form.
- Lira: Combines hendecasyllables and heptasyllables, imitating the Horatian ode.
Key Poets
- Garcilaso de la Vega: Masterfully adapted Italian poetic forms to Spanish, combining musicality and structural balance.
- Fernando de Herrera: A renowned humanist and highly regarded poet after Garcilaso.
- San Juan de la Cruz: Known for poems like Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, and Living Flame of Love.
Baroque Poetry
Baroque poetry, characterized by contrasts, explored diverse themes, often with a burlesque touch. Satirical poetry flourished. The sonnet and romance saw significant development.
Culteranismo and Conceptismo
- Culteranismo: Embellished reality through metaphors, hyperbaton, cultisms, and classical allusions.
- Conceptismo: Employed wordplay, puns, and paronomasias, focusing on the concept of correspondence between objects.
Poetic Schools
- Seville School: Modeled after Herrera.
- Antequera-Granada School: Notable authors include Pedro Espinosa and Luis de Góngora.
- Aragonese School: Represented by Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola.
- Madrid School: Included poets like Lope de Vega and Quevedo.
Prose of the Golden Age
Dialogue and Fiction
Dialogue was popular and crucial for the novel’s development. Sixteenth-century prose fiction encompassed pastoral, Moorish, and Byzantine styles (e.g., Lazarillo de Tormes).
Key Prose Genres and Authors
- Pastoral: Jorge de Montemayor’s work idealized nature and love, expressed in calm, melancholic language.
- Moorish: Idealized the Moorish figure and Muslim-Christian fraternity.
- Byzantine: Narrated pilgrimages interspersed with adventures and romantic storylines.
Later, the Byzantine novel, chivalric romance, and pastoral declined. The picaresque novel and Menippean satire gained prominence.
Lazarillo de Tormes
Subject: An autobiographical letter by the protagonist, Lázaro, recounting his childhood and responding to an inquiry about rumors surrounding his wife and a Dean.
Realism: The author aimed for verisimilitude. Lázaro’s narrative voice is humble and coarse, reflecting his marginalized status in a harsh society.
Structure: Seven chapters and a prologue. The first three chapters follow a folktale structure, gradually developing the theme of hunger. From chapter four, a narrative structure is employed.
Miguel de Cervantes
: A major figure of world literature. His masterpiece has been translated into all languages of culture. The literary production includes the dramatic and narrative. Cervantes, playwright: · comedies: comedies include captive and the comedies of manners and entanglement. · Starters: they were comic character pieces that were staged during the intermissions of the works of longer duration. Cervantes wrote 8 in prose and verse. • The Numancia: it dramatizes the siege of the city Iberian conducting the Romans and the heroic defense of their people. Cervantes, novelist: · • The pastoral genre. The Galatea: divided into 6 books that contains a love story, theoretical disquisitions on love, an extensive anthology of poetry … The adventure novel or Byzantine. The Persiles: narrates the pilgrimage to Rome and the princes Periander Auristela. Step followed the Greek model. Also due to this model the continuous changes of fortune and place of the actors and their peers.