Spanish Baroque Literature: A Deep Dive into 17th-Century Culture
History and Society (17th Century)
The 17th century in Spain was checked by political and social decline. The monarchy’s era of absolute luxury coexisted with widespread poverty and hunger, while old social and religious prejudices were revitalized. It was a period of impoverishment.
Culture
Culture during the Baroque era was bright, varied, and elaborate. It reflected a deep pessimism, insecurity, uneasiness, and fear stemming from the social crisis. It accentuated the departure from the humanist ideals of tolerance, rationality, and balance.
Baroque Literature
Baroque literature reflects the worries and tastes of the time. The most characteristic theme is disillusionment or disappointment with the era, leading to the development of satire.
Conceptismo and Culteranismo
Two literary trends emerged: Conceptismo, based on intellectual depth, and Culteranismo, focused on formal beauty and elaborate language.
Conceptismo
(Quevedo’s style) – Reflects the Baroque aesthetic focused on intellect and the interplay of ideas or concepts. It utilizes paradoxes, antithesis, and polysemy. It tends towards concise expression, brevity, elliptical language, and often employs metaphors. It was cultivated primarily in prose and less in poetry.
Culteranismo
(Gongora’s style) – A term initially used derogatorily to describe Gongora’s style. Culterana poetry follows the trend initiated by Fernando de Herrera, who aspired to create a language different from the common one. Culteranismo is characterized by the accumulation of literary and rhetorical resources employed by Baroque poets to achieve formal brilliance. They presented a transformed and embellished reality through abundant metaphors and hyperbolic images that were often difficult to interpret. It frequently used neologisms, Latinate vocabulary and syntax, long sentences, and mythological allusions. It was cultivated more in poetry than in prose.
Luis de Góngora
Creator of Culterana poetry: sophisticated, educated, brilliant, and difficult. He constructed metaphors that distanced language from common speech and presented a transformed and embellished world. He also wrote poems in traditional and burlesque forms.
Work
Gongora was a respected poet who invented a brilliant, sophisticated, and elitist poetic language – the Culterano style. His poetry did not aim to represent reality but to transform it into a new world of beauty through metaphors.
The Cultured Poet
Gongora’s poetry is characterized by:
- Abundant lexical and syntactical cultismos (learned or obscure words and constructions)
- Hyperbaton (inverted word order) and long phrases
- Embellishing metaphors
- Abundance of mythological allusions and conceptista wordplay
He wrote Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea and Soledades, two extensive poems. He also wrote romances and letrillas, sung poems that conveyed pastoral, lyrical, Moorish, and mythological themes.
Francisco de Quevedo
Quevedo wrote rich poetry and prose in almost all forms and genres. He combined the popular and burlesque with the grave and conceptista style. This contrast reflects the typical Baroque duality.
- Reflective lyrics with a grave tone, exploring topics like love, death, the decay of Spain, disillusionment, and the fleeting nature of life.
- Burlesque poetry with satirical and anecdotal themes.
Work
Quevedo’s work was diverse, including picaresque novels. His poetry was not published until after his death, as it was primarily transmitted through songs. Two styles are distinguished:
- Grave, reflective poetry where he expresses his metaphysical ideas and feelings in a serious tone. This includes poems on moral, religious, and love themes, reflecting on the meaning of life, death, and the passage of time.
- Poetry as a game of wit: satirical poems where linguistic experimentation predominates, with varied topics.
Quevedo’s Poetic Style
His originality lies in the use of language and unconventional topics. His conceptista style aimed to surprise through the association of new concepts:
- Highly original metaphors, both embellishing and deforming, that personify objects and objectify human beings.
- Creation of new words, derived or compound.
- Use of grammatical transformations, employing verbs as nouns.
- Abundant conceptista wordplay, exaggeration, and hyperbole.
Narrative and Didactic Prose
Quevedo introduced novelties compared to the previous century: chivalric romances were no longer cultivated, and the picaresque novel, the allegorical novel, and short fiction developed. Didactic and satirical prose flourished.
Quevedo’s Prose
He wrote a sumptuous prose where political and moral topics predominated, with a pessimistic tone. His varied works include:
- Moral and allegorical satires: Dreams, satirizing various social types.
- Political works: Politics of God, criticizing political practices.
- Philosophical and moral works: The Cradle and the Grave.
- Literary criticism: The Cultured Speaker, where he argued against Culteranismo.
- Festive and burlesque works: The Court of Fools, narratives on varied topics, offering a ruthless vision of humanity and criticizing social classes.
- Picaresque novel: The Swindler (El Buscón), a major work of the picaresque genre, reflecting the moral decay of the time and showcasing a model of conceptista style. It presents the characteristic features of the picaresque novel: an autobiographical account of the misfortunes of a humble protagonist serving many masters. It is a novel with social criticism but ambiguous intentions. It features high expressive condensation, wordplay, and verbal jokes.
Baroque Theater (17th Century)
Theater reached its peak in the 17th century with popular playwrights like Lope de Vega and Calderon. The success of the Corrales de Comedias (public theaters) was notable, coexisting with religious and courtly theater.
Religious Theater
The auto sacramental, a one-act religious play, was a significant genre. These plays presented allegorical characters (Good, Sin, Man) and dealt with the Eucharist or Communion, presenting the conflict between good and evil.
Courtly Theater
Performed in palace gardens or halls. Scenic innovations allowed for spectacular special effects.
Corrales de Comedias
Public theaters enjoyed great success in the 17th century. They were courtyards surrounded by houses, with a simple stage and curtain. The audience was mainly popular, with benches in front of the stage, a separate area for women (cazuela), and balconies for nobles. Performances took place in daylight, starting in the afternoon and lasting several hours. They began with a loa (introductory verse), followed by the first act, often a short humorous piece. After the second act, songs or dances were performed, and the performance concluded with a third act and a final sainete (short comic piece).
Lope de Vega: Poetry and Fiction
Lope was an excellent poet with a simple and natural style. He wrote traditional lyrical poetry, sonnets, and epic poetry. His love and religious poetry achieved deep autobiographical intensity and remarkable quality. He also excelled as a narrator in his novel The Dialogue of Dorothea.
Lope’s Theater
In the late 16th century, Lope created a simpler theater that catered to public taste and gave agility to performances.
The New Comedy (Characteristics of Baroque Theater)
Lope introduced numerous innovations that led to great success and established a standard for 17th-century theater. His renewal was based on breaking with classical norms:
- Rejection of the three unities (action, time, and place): Lope ended the restrictions imposed by tradition and adapted to public taste. He introduced multiple settings, adding dynamism and spectacle. Time was extended as needed, and the action was relatively unified, with a variety of characters.
- Three-act structure: To speed up performances, the acts corresponded to exposition, rising action, and resolution.
- Mixture of tragic and comic elements: Tones and atmospheres were blended.
- Use of different verse forms: Lope wrote exclusively in verse, predominantly eight-syllable lines, but also romances, décimas, and sonnets.
Lope provided guidelines on language, characters, and themes:
- Decorum: Each character should speak in a manner appropriate to their social status.
- The figure of the gracioso (jester): A character who evolved from the fool and provided comic relief.
- Inclusion of lyrical elements: Songs and dances added spectacle and color.
Themes in Lope’s Theater
With freedom in choosing topics, Lope offered a variety of themes: religious, historical, legendary, and love affairs. His works are categorized by themes:
- Religious plays: Dramatizing the lives of saints or inspired by the Bible.
- Spanish legends: Set in the Middle Ages, based on romances and historical events, including dramas of unjustly seized power, always supporting the monarchy.
- Contemporary comedies of love and intrigue: Works full of intrigues in rural or urban settings, with a lighthearted tone and happy endings.
Characters
Lope’s characters are defined by their actions and become social models:
- The King: The noble ruler.
- The Knight or Nobleman
- The Gallant
- The Lady
- The Maid
- The Gracioso (jester)
Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Theater
Calderon’s theater reflects a pessimistic and conservative Baroque worldview. It is a sophisticated theater that explores deep and symbolic themes through carefully elaborated plots and language. He built upon Lope’s formula but evolved it, refining the central scheme, plot, themes, and characters. He removed unnecessary scenes and characters, subordinating them to the main theme and reducing the number of works. He created a more schematic and intellectual theater of ideas and symbols.
- Typical Baroque language
- Elaborate characters
- Spectacular scenography with numerous innovations
Themes
Calderon’s themes are philosophical and theological. He also intensified the themes of monarchy and honor, as well as comedies of intrigue (cloak and sword plays).
- Religious dramas
- Contemporary comedies of intrigue
- Mythological dramas
- Dramas of honor and jealousy
- Philosophical dramas
- Autos sacramentales