Renaissance and Baroque Spanish Narrative
1. Renaissance Narrative
1.1 The Romance of Chivalry
The chivalric genre originated in medieval times. During the 16th century, this genre reached enormous development thanks to the printing press. Tirant lo Blanc, by Joanot Martorell, written in Catalan in 1490. According to Cervantes, it is the best book in the world, commending the absence of fantastic episodes. Amadis of Gaul, by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, published in 1508, is the Spanish chivalric novel par excellence. It is characterized by the presence of fantastic elements, with teachings always oriented towards the defense of chivalric virtues.
1.2 The Pastoral Novel
Of Italian origin, it started in 1504 with Sannazaro’s L’Arcadia. These works tell the amorous misadventures of idealized shepherds living in an idyllic setting. They are characterized by the presence of verse fragments. In Castilian, the first novelist of the genre is Jorge de Montemayor. His work, Diana, presents a utopian world populated by herdsmen who report their emotional experiences and their disappointments in love.
1.3 Moorish Granada Stories
These novels present love stories featuring Moors and Christians, with incarcerations, separations, and reunions. They present an idealized image of the Muslim world and idyllic relations between the two cultures, thus distorting reality. The first of these works is the History of Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa. It is a sentimental novel in which the lovers are two young Muslims of noble families from Granada.
2. The Realist Narrative
This novel features realistic, everyday aspects of reality. These stories, which follow the lead of La Celestina, represent a great innovation because they focus on the psychological development of characters, and their appearance will be crucial to the creation of the modern novel.
2.1 The Picaresque Novel
Major Works:
- Lazarillo de Tormes
- Guzmán de Alfarache – Mateo Alemán
- The Life of Buscón – Francisco de Quevedo
Features:
- Recount the misfortunes of a low-status character, the rogue, who lives to serve several masters.
- The story is presented as a fictional autobiography and retrospective of the protagonist. The reader witnesses the psychological development of the rogue, who is losing his innocence.
- The narrator writes about his past when an adult rogue. Son of parents without honor, he becomes a thief and serves several masters. He is always encouraged by the desire for social ascent, an aspiration that fails.
- Picaresque works are realistic and offer a wide and varied social portrait.
3. Miguel de Cervantes
Work:
He tried his luck in all literary genres; he published 12 short stories, which he called exemplary novels. He considers himself the first author to have written these novels in Castilian. They recount the vicissitudes of one or more special characters. They lack comments that distract the reader and intend that the reader may extract a moral example. His fame was undoubtedly obtained by a single work: “The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.”
Plot:
In Don Quixote, Cervantes satirizes the romances of chivalry, popular in his day. It narrates the adventures of a gentleman fired with madness because of his excessive fondness for books of chivalry. Believing himself a knight, he leaves his village in search of adventures, accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza. His mind confuses fantasy and reality.
Structure:
The first part tells of two outings. The first is an almost autonomous part that narrates the protagonist’s creation as a knight-errant; he looks for a name and a lady to offer his victories to. In the second part, he goes with Sancho Panza. Along this second voyage are narratives that constitute small, intercalated novels within the Quixote. In the play are almost all kinds of Renaissance novels intercalated through narratives and stories, such as pastoral, picaresque, and Moorish stories. In the first part, both the real and the literary are reflected, and in the second part, characters appear who know Don Quixote because they have read his stories. The narrator pretends to collect data on his protagonist in the archives of La Mancha.
Intent:
Cervantes chose the most effective criticism: parody. All elements of the chivalric romances appear ridiculed. The parody is based on the clash that occurs between Don Quixote’s imagination and daily life.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza:
Don Quixote is the model of a noble, idealistic, and kind man, but insane. Sancho is the plain man, with enormous wisdom; he is credulous, utilizing vivid language, filled with numerous popular sayings.
The Meaning of Don Quixote:
Quixote’s mockery was clear, but interpretations have varied. The Romantics saw in Don Quixote the idealist overcome by the sad and commonplace reality, and the realists recognized in Cervantes a great novelist. The novel reflects the complexity of humans and many features of society at that time and reflects the process from Renaissance optimism to Baroque disappointment.
Style:
The work shows a style between the simplicity and naturalness characteristic of the Renaissance and Baroque complexity. It can adapt to the needs of an open and diverse work. It combines a cultured style and another that is plain, closer, natural, and expressive. The most common techniques and resources are irony, parody, and dialogue. Structural and formal novelties it poses are: realism, a non-heroic protagonist, psychological evolution of the protagonist, clashes between society and the individual, internal consistency of dialogue, and the combination of dialogue and narration.