Renaissance Spanish Novels: A Guide to Genres and Styles
Renaissance Spanish Novels
Byzantine Novel
The discovery of Ethiopian manuscripts and their translations introduced a new subgenre to the Renaissance: the Byzantine novel. These stories feature a young, beautiful, and chaste couple separated and reunited by fate. Their journey involves overcoming obstacles such as pirates, shipwrecks, and captivity. In Spanish Byzantine novels, the hero is a chaste young man whose main objective is love, often transforming into a symbolic pilgrim figure.
Narrative Techniques
Common techniques include in medias res and interpolated stories.
Pastoral Novel
Arcadia stands as a key example. Characters, often idealized shepherds, embark on a journey seeking happiness. Female characters often play prominent roles. Like the Byzantine novel, the pastoral novel uses letters and poetry to interrupt and enhance the narrative.
Celestinesca Novel
Inspired by the Tragicomedy of Callisto and Melibea, these 16th and 17th-century novels depict love stories facilitated by servants and a bawd.
Sentimental Novel
Key early figures include Juan de Flores and Diego de San Pedro.
Chivalric Romance
This subgenre flourished between 1510 and 1560, drawing inspiration from medieval chivalric narratives.
Morisca Novel
These novels depict life on the border between Castile and the last Muslim kingdom in the 15th century, often using real place names.
Lazarillo de Tormes
This pseudo-autobiographical narrative follows a young boy from a poor family who serves various masters. Lázaro’s life is divided into three modules: childhood with a blind man and other masters, adolescence marked by deception and hardship, and adulthood where he achieves professional success and marries. The story is structured as a letter to a superior, explaining Lázaro’s adult personality through his childhood adventures.
Discourse and Themes
The narrative includes evaluative discourse, humor, puns, and antithesis. Key themes include honor and religion.
Don Quixote de la Mancha
Published in two parts (1605 and 1615), this novel satirizes chivalric romances. The story follows Don Quixote’s three adventures with Sancho Panza, culminating in his defeat and return home. The narrative features a complex interplay of time, space, and character development.
Characters
- Don Quixote: A tall, thin, elderly, and idealistic man driven to madness by his love of chivalric literature.
- Sancho Panza: Don Quixote’s loyal but practical squire.
- Dulcinea: An idealized peasant woman, a figment of Don Quixote’s imagination.
Themes and Style
Don Quixote explores themes of literature, reality, and madness. The novel employs a variety of narrative techniques, including a primary narrator, fictional authors, and character-narrators. The language ranges from archaic and chivalric to colloquial and rhetorical, often incorporating humor and irony.