Medieval & Renaissance Literature: Chivalry, Humanism & The Baroque
Medieval Literature
The Novels of Chivalry
Medieval European epics, written in verse or prose, narrate legendary incidents, often based on real events. These stories feature knights errant embarking on extraordinary adventures, often with a focus on courtly love (e.g., Tristan and Isolde).
The Chivalric Novel
Evolving from the novels of chivalry, these prose narratives, influenced by Catalan chronicles, reflected real-life situations. A reciprocal influence existed between literature and reality, as knights, inspired by these novels, sought to emulate their heroes (e.g., Amadis of Gaul and Don Quixote).
The Renaissance (early 16th – late 17th century)
This era witnessed the expansion of humanist ideals, originating in 14th-century Italy, which embraced an anthropomorphic worldview. Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a man within a circle symbolizes this new cosmic vision.
Background
- Politics: Rise of authoritarian monarchies centered around the court and courtier. The nobility’s decline, particularly the rural nobility, weakened the feudal system, allowing for the creation of modern states.
- Economy: The evolution of pre-capitalism and the emergence of the bourgeoisie.
- Exploration: The discovery of America led to new conquests, global empires, and nascent colonialism. The Mediterranean, dominated by the Turks, lost prominence to the Atlantic.
- Science: Rationalist conceptions advanced scientific progress.
- Printing: The invention of printing revolutionized the spread of knowledge.
- Humanism: Renewed interest in Greco-Roman legacy, leading to a philological revolution and the consolidation of vernacular languages alongside Latin as languages of culture.
Literary Features
- Platonism: Revival of Platonic ideals of beauty and goodness, influencing art and utopian thought, particularly the theme of Platonic love, exemplified by Petrarchism.
- Aristotelian Influence: Aristotle’s Poetics impacted theater, emphasizing the distinction between high (tragedy) and low (comedy) styles, and the three unities of place, time, and action.
- Horatian Influence: Horace’s Ars Poetica promoted imitation of the classics and Stoic morality.
- Nature: Idealized nature reflected a new sensibility valuing perception and sensation, expressed through classical tropes like ubi sunt, carpe diem, and locus amoenus.
- Genre Revival: Renewed interest in classical genres like epic and tragedy.
- Dialogue and Mythology: Dialogue-based prose gained popularity, and mythology, alongside Christian iconography, played a significant role, often expressed through allegory.
- Picaresque Novel: A counterpoint to pastoral and Petrarchan literature, the picaresque novel, starting with Lazarillo de Tormes, questioned the established order and foreshadowed the 19th-century realist novel.
Italian Literature
Prose
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), a Florentine diplomat and political theorist, wrote The Prince, a highly influential treatise on political philosophy. It described how a ruler should maintain power, even through cunning and deception, prioritizing the state’s interests over morality. This pragmatic approach, termed Machiavellianism, became synonymous with ruthless political expediency.
French Literature
Poetry
Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), despite poor health, devoted himself to poetry. Influenced by Hellenistic poetry and Pindar, he founded the influential literary group La Pléiade.
Essay
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a lawyer and public official, pioneered the essay genre with his Essays. His work explored themes of truth, knowledge, and skepticism, reflected in his motto “Que sais-je?” (“What do I know?”).
The Baroque (17th Century)
Background
The Baroque emerged as a reaction against the humanist spirit of the Renaissance. Europe faced crises, including economic hardship, disease, and social unrest. This period saw a shift from Renaissance ideals of balance and harmony towards complexity and dynamism.
Literary Features
- Drama and Exuberance: Baroque art emphasized movement, infinity, paradox, and the blending of genres. This dramatic style is evident in architecture, literature, and theater.
- Theatricality: A theatrical concept of art prevailed, with elaborate sets and dramatic effects in various genres.
- Irony and Metafiction: Playfulness with form led to metafiction, where stories within stories and plays within plays highlighted the awareness of representation.
- Emphasis on Emotion: Baroque art appealed to emotion, imagination, and the senses, reflecting a distrust of pure reason.
- Contrast and Dynamism: Baroque art is characterized by contrast, dynamism, and a sense of grandeur, reflecting the Counter-Reformation’s emphasis on impressing through size, wealth, and glory.
Fibula
: a narrative in which women education through an allegory of human attitudes. The Age of Enlightenment: The eighteenth century has been called the Age of Enlightenment. This metaphor is clearly expressed on that knowledge and human consciousness has reason encimbellada as rector of life in all its dimensions: political, artistic, scientific, etc.. The cultural movement, philosophical and political structure that gives the eighteenth s full force called Enlightenment. Background: The Enlightenment project is related to the Renaissance and the theories developed in empirical philosophy throughout the seventeenth century . Its core reason. It relies on reason to arrive at knowledge of reality and its management, and bandegen irrational explanations of the universe. This causes a humanist optimism is based on the idea of progress. It is an ideology that triumphed with the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, which came to power in the political end of the century, both France and other countries. The encyclopedism: The Enlightenment thought has the epicenters British philosophy developed by Locke, Hume and Newton, but mostly was structured and spread around the encyclopedism. encyclopedism The movement is based on the cultural and publishing project undertaken by the Encyclopédie Diderot and D ‘Alembert. Sums up perfectly the spirit of the Enlightenment to gather and systematize the knowledge of the time since the desire to spread the ideals illustrated defend freedom of expression and put in the center of human life right . So was crucial to have the collaboration of some of the best intellectuals of the era, among which we cite Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. As for the editing process, the Encyclopedia appeared 28 volumes. Later they brought out the first supplements, a total of 4 volumes, while in 1780 they closed the year with the preparation, in two volumes of the analytical index of contents.This environment is conducive to wisdom led to the creation of multiple academies dedicated to languages, sciences, etc.. However, the figure of intellectual excellence is the philosopher and man of letters, which carry out the al’encuny freethinker. The Freethought is linked to the critical dimension that has reason. The criticism was developed throughout the Enlightenment. The culmination of the philosophical movement occurs in the figure of Immanuel Kant, who in turn became the discoverer of the limit of reason in the cognitive process. Neoclassicism: century century there were three aesthetic and artistic movements: the end of the Baroque-Rococo and neoclassicism preromanticisme. Properly determining the most current and best exemplifies the ideals illustrated was neoclassicism. Aesthetic is a tendency to reevaluate the classical notion of the artistic work and, therefore, opposed to the Baroque and are related to the process of the Renaissance humanist. Sobriety ornamental and the most significant recovery in art: the column and pediment, architecture, marble and mythological motifs, sculpture etc.. neoclassical literature was marked by triumph of rationalism and enlightened thinking. So were very important to test different forms that were implemented, with special attention to the epistolary genre, which excels in the Persian Letters, Montesquieu, and Letters marruecas of scaffold. The novel the contemporary: fiction and poetry became didactic, and imitates the classics, while the theater is to adhere to the three units following the model of Racine. We preferred the tragedy in verse and will play mythological themes. In this section, the consolidated model called the sentimental novel, the characters must cope with social pressures and moral prejudice at the time they are found. Authors: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, son of a Huguenot family emigrated to Switzerland, Rousseau went to Paris, where after some literary failures, got a certain invitation to pray and work together to Calendar ‘Encyclopedia. True to its ideology broke with encyclopedists, had several controversies and returned to become a Swiss citizen and Calvinist. Montmorency In his time he lived there more fruitful wrote books like Emil Du contrat social. This latest work forced him to exile in Switzerland. Already posthumous, the Confessions encyclopedists respond to multiple attacks. Rousseau had a hard enenmistat with Voltaire and Hume. Individualistic writer, jealous of liberty, in his work laid the foundations of the new romantic spirit which prevails at the beginning of sXIX. Daniel Defoe:The son of a merchant named Foe was devoted to the textile trade, which will provide constant opportunities to travel. Dom author was long-winded, because together with his novels and journalistic work he published different kinds of writings. However, the celebrity struck in Robinson Crusoe, based on the reality of abandonment, d ‘Alexander Selkirk, a morning on a deserted island. The novel goes beyond the narrative encasellament in youth and becomes a work that not only opens the way in shaping what will be later, with realism, the novel contemporary, but also reflects various topics such as transcendental role of divine providence in human life, the desire for survival, the new world economic order or the conquest of space unknown. The interpretation of the play: Robinson Crusoe represents the modern myth of individualism that the world legitimizes bourgeois . It has been said is that the Bible, or a real life man, the virtues of mercantilist and industrial and has been seen as the height of individual initiative. Everything in it has a practical sense, some sentences are memorable: what happened to me often occur when excessive prosperity becomes the instrument of our greatest misfortune. When the money is called the wreck, not without irony; Oh, drug! Why worship?. Robinson’s struggle to survive this fight ends up being symbolic of the human condition. Proof of the popularity of the book are the numerous imitations across Europe. Recall, for example, Rousseau recommends the book as reading your ideal student, the Emilio. Some authors believe that, after Don Quixote, this is the novel that makes a new step forward in the history of European fiction. Every reader remembers his Robinson. Robinson is one of the great figures of world literature. Far from representing a hymn to nature, their supervicència means the victory of the reason for the fight individually against the hostile environment, to impose their ways artificial. The survivor thinks that with the use of intelligence, any man can overpower reality. But beyond the circumstances, Robinson’s struggle with itself, with its growth and its formation is a symbol of self-assertion against adversity.