Spanish Baroque Literature: A Historical Overview
Baroque Literature
Historical Context
The Baroque period in Spain (late 16th – 18th century) reflects the human condition amidst absolute monarchy and economic crisis. Philip III’s disinterest in governing led to a decline in political prestige. Philip IV’s reign saw tax evasion, corruption, and rural depopulation. Carlos II’s rule marked a dark period of military losses and financial ruin, ending with the Bourbon ascension.
Social Classes
- Nobility: Focused on enhancing privileges, allied with monarchy and clergy against the rising bourgeoisie.
- Clergy: Increased in numbers, tax-exempt, and viewed the church as a means to wealth.
- Bourgeoisie: Gained economic power, aspired to a noble lifestyle.
- Common People: Suffered the crisis’s consequences, migrated from rural areas to cities.
Renaissance vs. Baroque
- Renaissance: Optimistic, death is not the end, intense idealism.
- Baroque: Pessimistic, life is an illusion, death precedes true happiness, intense religiosity.
Counter-Reformation
This era emphasized Catholic doctrine, strengthened papal authority, and promoted clergy training in seminaries.
Metrics and Themes
Hendecasyllable meter continued from the Renaissance but broke with classical decorum. Letrillas (8-syllable verses with chorus) were used for satirical themes.
- Love: Renaissance themes of life/death, love/pain, expressed through antithesis.
- Mythology: Gained prominence.
- Nature: Scenic descriptions highlighted beauty, often contrasted with ugliness, light/dark.
- Satire: Writers mocked various issues in humorous compositions.
- Transience of Life: Time represented through diverse descriptions, alongside religious, political, moral, and elegiac themes.
Poetry
Culterano Lyric (Luis de Góngora)
Emphasized stylistic beauty, sensory overload (light, color, sound), excessive use of cultismos (learned words) and complex syntax. Resources included hyperbaton, metaphors, and adjectives.
Conceptismo (Francisco Quevedo)
Explored wordplay and wit. Resources included neologisms, adjectives, dilogía (double meanings), hyperbole, and antithesis.
Narrative
Picaresque novels emerged, reflecting a pessimistic view of life.
Guzmán de Alfarache (Mateo Alemán)
- Autobiographical style, a young man without honor navigates through various owners and trades, thriving on theft and deception.
- Moral digressions and two narrative voices (past and present perspectives).
El Buscón (Francisco de Quevedo)
- Objective narration aimed at humor, portrays a cruel society without moral intention.
- Central theme: Pablos’s ambition to gain status and join the nobility.
- Distorted reality through caricature, not didactic.
Common Picaresque Features
- Autobiographical character with low reputation.
- Serves several masters, encounters representative societal characters.
- Narrates bitter experiences, describes social struggles.
- Character’s attempts at social integration.
Prose
Baltasar Gracián
Cultivated didactic and philosophical prose, known for conceptismo and a pessimistic worldview.
- Criticón: Allegorical-philosophical work featuring Critilo (reason) and Andrenio (nature).
Theater
A social act in bustling cities, comedies aimed to entertain and surprise audiences.
Lope de Vega (Creator of National Theater)
- Three-act structure with multiple scenes, blending tragic and comic elements.
- Varied topics: honor (repaired through death and blood), love (elevates man and virtue).
- Popular language adapted to character status, traditional and educated metric forms.
- Characters represented collective ideals (king, nobleman, knight, youth, woman, jester, villain).
Calderón de la Barca
- Brevity, technical richness, simplified plots.
- Complex themes: philosophical, religious (with moral lessons).
- Key relationships: faith, love, revenge.
- Culterano language, stylistic devices, versification suited to the situation.
- Climax/anti-climax scenes, asides to clarify actions and feelings.
- Monologues reveal character intimacy and inner struggles.
- Fewer characters, defined by social class, acting according to their status.
- Court as the new theatrical space, integrating various artistic elements.