Renaissance Prose: Didactic, Fiction, and Novels
Renaissance Prose: Didactic and Fictional Works
The prose of the Golden Age, encompassing both didactic prose (dialogues) and fiction (novels), transmits the new Renaissance ideas. Dialogues contributed to the development of the novel. Highlights include Dialogue of Language by Juan de Valdés and Dialogue of Mercury and Charon by Alfonso Valdés.
Doctrinal Treatises
St. Teresa of Ávila’s prose is widespread on doctrinal aesthetic levels. Teresa of Jesus was a great prose writer, both classical and popular, at the time. A key work is the Book of Life (autobiography).
Prose Fiction
The Pastoral Novel
The genre began in 1559 with The Seven Books of Diana by Jorge Montemayor, which recounts the loves of Diana and Sireno and intersperses the loves of three beautiful young women. It is characterized by the idealization of nature, love, and quiet language. A highlight is La Galatea by Cervantes.
Moorish Novel
The Abencerraje idealized the figure of the Moor and the coexistence between Muslims and Christians.
The Byzantine Novel
Its argument mixes romantic action and adventure. The main characters are young lovers of high rank who are constantly separated, culminating in a final marriage. Alonso Núñez de Reinoso is the author of the first Byzantine novel in Spain: History of the Loves of Thinning and Florisea. Notable works include The Pilgrim in His Homeland by Lope de Vega and Cervantes’ Sismunda. From the seventeenth century, Byzantine novellas continued with great success, while those of chivalry and the pastoral disappeared. The picaresque novel was consolidated and displayed Menippean satire.
The Picaresque Novel
The genre was not established until Mateo Alemán published the first part of Guzmán de Alfarache. Lazarillo de Tormes seized the autobiographical form, using it to explain the history from the confessions of the rogue as examples for readers to learn.
Baltasar Gracián
His work is aimed at training human beings to live in society with caution. Some of his books are called arts of prudence that are intended to teach how to survive in Baroque society. El Criticón is the most important of Gracián’s works. This is a bizantinaalegórica novel about human life, from birth to death. Its protagonists symbolize reason and nature. This contrast between appearance and reality is a Baroque topic.
Lazarillo de Tormes
Lazarillo is a form of autobiographical letter submitted in response to an unknown recipient, which narrates the life of Lazarillo de Tormes. The author brings the fiction to the limit, does not sign the work, and gave voice to his character, a crier. Lazarus is an outcast who lives alone in a cruel society, in a fictional narrative. It is structured in 7 chapters and a prologue.
Miguel de Cervantes wrote comedy theater, farces, and tragedies like La Numancia. His appetizers are comic characters. He also wrote pastoral novels, Byzantine novels, novellas, and books of chivalry. His pastoral novel, Galatea, consists of 7 books. His adventure novel, or Byzantine novel, Persiles, follows the Greek model, with structural complexity beginning in medias res. The story breaks, and Persiles is a posthumous work. His novels feature short psychosocial characterizations of the characters in Quixote, which has two parts (1605 and 1615).