Introduction to Spanish Literature: Genres and Origins

Posted on Sep 21, 2024 in Latin

ITEM 11: Literature

What is Literature?

Artistic creativity expressed in words, even if they are not written, but spread by word of mouth.

Literature as an Aesthetic Phenomenon

Its vehicle of expression is language, which is the usual system of communication between people.

Literature as a Communicative Phenomenon

The literary work must be understood as an act of communication between human beings. The communicative situation of the literary work is different if it refers to:

  • Issuer: Absent at the time of receipt, the author of another century.
  • Receiver: Does not understand the message at the time it takes place; the act occurs when accessing the site and reading it.

Literature as a Social Phenomenon

Literature is a social phenomenon since the author is situated within a society, time, and space.

  • Aspects that influence:
  • Society influences the literary work, such as contact between cultures.
  • The society of the time influences literature, for example, social consciousness at the time of Charles Dickens.
  • Literature itself can be modified in the work; for example, in Pascual Duarte’s family, it is devoted to presenting realism.

Prose and Verse

  • Prose: A form of expression more similar to everyday speech but has different levels of development and aesthetic artifice.
  • Verse: Highlights the musical rhythm. It is achieved by:
    • Accents: Mark the rhythm of the poem.
    • Rhyme: Repetition of certain sounds from the last accented vowel of each verse. If consonants and vowels are repeated, it is rhyme, and if it is only the vowel itself, it is assonance.
    • Syllable counting: Repetition of the same number of syllables in all the verses or the alternation of two or more syllabic schemes creates different rhythms.

Literary Genres

Lyric Genres

  • Lyric: Transmits subjective sensations, experiences, or thoughts, written in verse, but there is also poetic prose.
Lyric Subgenres
  • Elegy: Expresses grief at the death of a loved one (e.g., Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Majid by Lorca). It is also used to express the transience of life and nostalgia for lost youth.
  • Eclogue: Dialogue between pastors about love affairs in a bucolic and idealized setting (e.g., works by Juan del Encina and Lope de Vega).
  • Ode: Long poem dealing with diverse issues and a high tone (e.g., Ode to the Retired Life by Fray Luis de León).
  • Song: Typically about love (e.g., works by Garcilaso de la Vega) but can also express other feelings.
  • Satire: Humorous and brief presentation of individual or social defects (e.g., Book of Good Love by Archpriest of Hita).

Narrative Genres

A story told by a narrator where a plot unfolds. The elements are the narrator (omniscient, witness, protagonist), the order of events in time, and characters (protagonists, antagonists, secondary).

Narrative Subgenres in Verse
  • Epic: Long poem that praises the prodigious feats of a hero (e.g., Iliad, Odyssey by Homer).
  • Song of epic: Epic of oral creation and dissemination extolling the exploits of a local or national hero. In the Middle Ages (e.g., The Song of My Cid), written in verses of 14 and 16 syllables divided and grouped into triads of monorhyming hemistiches.
  • Romance: Originally a short oral poem. Arising in the 15th century as fragments of epic poems, but then became autonomous with themes of love and history. Eight-syllable verses written in assonance rhyme in pairs, and the odd ones are free.
Narrative Subgenres in Prose
  • Novel: Develops a comprehensive narrative history of space and time. It is a fictional narrative that describes environments, includes facts, and analyzes behaviors and feelings. Don Quixote from the 17th century is the first modern European novel.
  • Short Story: Short story with feigned action. Presents condensed stories, has fewer characters, the space is imaginary, and the story elements are simpler than in the novel (e.g., Stories of the Jungle by Horacio Quiroga).
  • Legend: Fictional story that has its origin in history or where there are fantastic or pseudo-historical events (e.g., Legends by Becquer).
  • Apologue: Story that gives rules of conduct and morals. Ends with a moral. In the Middle Ages, they were called enxiemplos (e.g., Count Lucanor by Juan Manuel).
  • Epistle: Subject is doctrinal, philosophical, moral, or satirical, written as a letter. Written in verse during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
  • Fable: Stories with personified animals as protagonists. They end with a moral. Tomás Iriarte and Samaniego stand out.
  • Essay: Text where the author addresses a wide audience to explain and defend their attitude towards an issue. Expresses ideas and wealth of style. Reached its peak in the 18th century and the Generation of ’98.

Theatrical Genres

They are written to be represented, not read. Presents the text through direct dialogue of characters, written in prose. The stage directions report on the movements of the characters, their feelings, and attitudes about the time and space where the plot develops. Asides reproduce what the characters think and help the reader understand the development of the text.

Major Theatrical Subgenres
  • Tragedy: The characters are of high social status, struggling against their fate but succumbing. The classic was written in verse, and its hero was a mythological hero. Modern tragedy emerges with Shakespeare.
  • Comedy: Daily activities treated comically, with a happy ending.
  • Drama: Painful conflict but with comic scenes. Social drama is one in which the conflict is collective or social, such as labor or human trafficking.
  • Tragicomedy: A mixture of all major theatrical subgenres.
Minor Theatrical Subgenres
  • Auto sacramental: Short play of a religious and allegorical nature that celebrates the Eucharist.
  • Entremés: Short work of the 17th century performed during the intermissions of long comedies. Cervantes stands out.
  • Sainete: Short play featuring popular characters who develop a comedic action in a customs setting. La Revoltosa by Carlos Arniches stands out.

ITEM 12: Origins of Spanish Literature

Lyric Poetry

Popular Lyric

Jarchas and Mozarabic Lyric

These are the first known manifestations of literature in Castilian. The oldest are from the 11th century.

Jarchas are brief compositions that are listed at the end of some Arabic poems (moaxajas), consisting of a few verses and a variety of syllables. There is a love theme: the sender, a girl in love, tells her suffering to her mother or her sisters.

Cantigas de Amigo in Galician-Portuguese Lyric

The issuer is also a girl who expresses her feelings to her mother, sisters, friends…: grief over the death of her beloved, anxiety, melancholy, and allegory for his return. Importance of nature. Unlike the cantigas de amor, cantigas de amigo have a popular language and a more specific vocabulary.

Castilian Lyric
  • Villancico: Small poems in which the issuer was a girl in love who complained about her situation. They occur in a rural setting: the spring as a meeting place of love, the rose as a symbol of virginity.
  • Serranilla: Emerges from the pastorals of Provence, but they present more realistic descriptive features. Topic: a gentleman meets a shepherdess from the Sierras de Castilla.

Learned Lyric

Idealized love, courtly love, impossible love due to the social situation.

Provençal Troubadour Lyric

Inheritance that will be received by the Castilian songbooks of the 15th century. It was cultivated by the troubadours.

  • Canso: Poem of a loving character, with a masculine transmitter and a feminine receiver. Vassal relationship between lover and beloved: she felt superior, and love as a “service” being made by the lover.
  • Courtly love, amatory arts of feudal society, required the discretion of love because the woman was married.
  • Sirventes: Used as an expression of anger, repression, personal attack. It was based on the melody of a canso.
Arabic and Jewish Lyric: Moaxajas

Poem written in classical Arabic or Hebrew. The moaxajas were songs composed of several stanzas of five or six lines. At the end of the last stanza, a short poem, the jarcha, was inserted.

Galician-Portuguese Lyric: Cantigas de Amor

Heirs of the Provençal canso. The lady remains oblivious to the feelings of love, pretends not to feel love for him, and hides his passion.