Renaissance Literature: Themes, Authors, and Prose Styles

Posted on Dec 1, 2024 in Latin

Evaluation: Themes and Poetic Motifs

(Topics)

A: Carpe diem (enjoy today), inviting enjoyment of the present moment.

B: Colligite, virgo, rosas (gather ye rosebuds, maiden), urging young couples to enjoy love before beauty fades.

C: Locus amoenus (pleasant place), depicting a green meadow, a refuge for the poet to express love’s suffering.

D: The Golden Mean, praising a moderate life, detached from ambition.

E: Beatus ille (happy is he), expressing regret for a life away from worldly chaos, seeking nature’s peace.

Alongside these motifs appear nature, mythology, and love, joined in the latter half by themes of the world’s flight, divine love, and patriotism.

The Poets of the Renaissance

San Juan de la Cruz

Works: Explores the mystical union of the soul with God, expressed symbolically: a woman (soul) through nature, a reflection of divine love.

Poetic Themes:

  • The Spiritual Canticle: A pastoral dialogue between the beloved and the lover.
  • The Dark Night: Eight liras where the beloved, after leaving home at night, joins the beloved in mystic ecstasy.
  • The Living Flame of Love: Expresses the loving feelings experienced in the union with the beloved.

Garcilaso de la Vega

Creative Stages
  • Poetry of the cancionero: Octosyllabic compositions alternating with early Italian forms. Abundant love themes and wordplay.
  • Petrarchan Stage: Imitating Petrarch, internalizing love, describing feelings, and using nature as a setting and means to portray the beloved.
  • Fullness of Creation: Result of his stay in Italy and approach to classics, yielding formal compositions and expressive sobriety.

Work: Boscan’s Poetic Work (published 1543), including an epistle, two elegies, three eclogues, five songs, 38 sonnets, and traditional poetry samples.

Dominant Poetic Themes: Love and nature.

Style: Early stage marked by antithesis, competitions, and word games. Later, he seeks harmony and natural, elegant language. His poems have a simple basis and fluent expression.

Fray Luis de León

Imposed a Platonic and Christian humanism, reconciling classical and Renaissance forms with religious themes.

Works in Verse (grouped into three periods):

  1. Writings before prison (1572): Including Ode to Retired Life and Prophecy of the Tagus River. Shows desire for solitude and contempt for worldly pleasures.
  2. Prison verses: Night Serene, with religious content, lamenting his unjust imprisonment.
  3. Works after prison: Ode to Salinas, revealing spiritual mysticism.

Poetics: Ideas and Influences:

  • Predominant nature, longing for the countryside, night, and music.
  • a = Neoplatonism: Ideal vision of a universe ruled by harmony.
  • b = Pythagorean influence: Everything can be reduced to numbers.
  • c = Stoic philosophy: Adopting the Golden Mean to face life’s challenges.

These ideas lead to the search for a restful life and the theme of flight from the world.

Types of Prose

1. Didactic Prose: Seeks human improvement and societal reformation. Key figures: Juan de Valdés and Fray Antonio de Guevara, advocating a return to nature.

2. Historical Prose: Driven by the era’s expansion and the prospects created by the conquest of America.

3. Religious Prose: Formative purpose, attuned to popular religiosity. Key representatives: Fray Luis de León and Saint Teresa of Avila.

4. Narrative Prose: Gains importance due to increased readership.

The Picaresque Novel

Begins in 1554 with The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and his Fortunes and Adversities.

Emergence of the Genre
  • a = Social environment: Changing demographics, individual mobility, unemployment, leading to urban poverty and petty crime.
  • b = Growing discrimination (limpieza de sangre), challenging coexistence and fostering critical perspectives.
  • c = Ideological openness under Charles I and criticism of idealistic novels’ improbability.
  • d = Literary reaction against chivalry books; the picaresque novel opposes their ideals.
The Rogue and the Picaresque
  1. Displays an anti-heroic attitude.
  2. Presents an ironic perspective.
  3. Works as a servant to many masters.
  4. Driven by immediate needs, mainly hunger.
  5. Suffers with resignation, seeking social advancement.
  6. Shows resilience and is not materialistic.
  7. Lacks innocence, possessing a warped code of honor.
Structure of the Picaresque Novel
  1. First-person autobiographical fiction.
  2. Episodic memories.
  3. A touring narrative.
  4. Events subordinated to a predetermined end.
  5. Follows a chronological evolution.
  6. Temporary confluences exist.

The Pasos (Interludes)

Brief theatrical compositions with simple plots inspired by tales.

  • a = The core action is mockery.
  • b = Characters are fixed types.
  • c = Dialogue is colloquial.
  • d = Develops a detail of everyday life.

The Entremeses (Entr’actes)

Originated in the mid-sixteenth century, distinct from pasos, obras mayores (major works), and jácaras (ballads). Comic theater pieces performed during intervals of serious works, structurally independent. Key features: humor and brevity.

  • A = The fool’s simplicity becomes credulity.
  • B = Characters adapt their speech to their social status.
  • C = Marginal lexicon, typical of thugs and thieves.

Lazarillo de Tormes: Argumental Themes and Axis

First-person narration by Lazarillo, a character of humble origins who learns to survive by his wits as a town crier in Toledo. The theme is a coming-of-age story, showing Lazarillo’s personality formation. Other themes: hunger, hypocrisy, false honor, poverty, social isolation, and begging.

Narrative Structure and Organization

The work consists of a prologue and seven chapters (tratados) in the form of a letter to an unknown addressee, appealing for their mercy (“vuestra merced”).

  • The first three chapters detail Lazarillo’s childhood adventures.
  • From chapter four, Lazarillo grows and improves his situation.
  • In chapter seven, Lazarillo is a married man with a stable job as a town crier.

This structure can be grouped into two parts:

  1. The narrative backbone, covering the case.
  2. Picaresque development, showing the learning and practice of picaresque teachings.
Characters

Lazarillo’s portrait is gradually completed through others’ actions and words. He evolves throughout the story.

Style

The language is simple, clear, and essential. Dialogues are lively with conversational phrases. Literary devices are used primarily to produce comic effects, maintaining ideals of simplicity and balance.