Spanish Baroque Literature: Culteranismo, Conceptismo, and Theater

Posted on Dec 8, 2024 in Latin

Culteranismo and Conceptismo in Spanish Baroque Literature

Culteranismo, championed by Luis de Góngora, aimed to create a refined poetic language. It emphasized formal beauty, vibrant imagery, and sensory experiences. This style involved intricate language, including bold metaphors, hyperbatons, and cultisms (learned or unusual words).

Conceptismo, represented by Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián, focused on conciseness and expressive density. It sought wit and sharpness through ellipses, paradoxes, puns, antitheses, and hyperboles.

The difference between Culteranismo and Conceptismo lies in their priorities. Culteranismo prioritizes beauty and ornamentation in form over content, while Conceptismo emphasizes the complexity of the message.

Baroque Poetry

Meter:

  • Italian hendecasyllable lines, sonnets, stanzas, and *silvas*.
  • Castilian forms like limericks, quatrains, and satirical-burlesque verses, notably the *décima*.
  • Popular lyrical forms such as *letrillas*, ballads, carols (*villancicos*), and *seguidillas* in theater.

Themes:

  • Amorous and Sentimental: Following Petrarchan tradition, influenced by Góngora and Quevedo.
  • Moral and Metaphysical: Life, withdrawal, the passage of time, ephemeral beauty, and existence.
  • Religious: Lope de Vega expressed piety and devotion.
  • Satirical-Burlesque: Challenging and parodying characters, myths, and customs.

Baroque Prose

Novella:

  • Influenced by Cervantes’ works.
  • Byzantine Novel: Lope’s *El peregrino en su patria*.
  • Allegorical Novel: Baltasar Gracián’s doctrinal *El Criticón*.
  • Novel of Manners: Humor, social satire, didacticism, and moralizing, exemplified by Agustín Rojas and Vélez de Guevara.
  • Picaresque Novel: First-person narrative, open structure, realistic portrayal of a rogue of dishonorable origin. The protagonist does not improve their social status and may face moral consequences.

Góngora’s Poetic Works

Góngora’s work spans both popular and educated styles.

  • Letrillas: Diverse themes with elaborate language, liveliness, and grace.
  • Romances: Various themes, including love, religion, myths, and teasing.
  • Sonnets: Love, praise, and disappointments are characteristic, sometimes with complex structures. Góngora aimed for a distinctive poetic language, using hyperbatons, lengthy statements, metaphors, antitheses, cultisms, and mythological allusions, making his work challenging to read.
  • Mature Poetry:
    • Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea: Written in 63 stanzas, inspired by Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*. It narrates Polyphemus’s love for the nymph Galatea and the jealous shepherd Acis, whom Polyphemus kills. Galatea transforms Acis into a river. Góngora focuses on the poem’s perfect construction rather than the narrative.

Quevedo’s Works

Quevedo wrote sonnets, ballads, *letrillas*, songs, and epistles, showcasing varied content, tone, and intention. He also excelled in prose.

Poetry:

  • Amorous: Follows amatory lyric conventions, conveying deep feeling and emotion.
  • Metaphysical: Explores anxiety about life, disappointment, resignation, the transience of life, and death. His poem “Miré los muros de la patria mía” reflects pessimism and the cold, dry nature of the day.
  • Moral: Satirizes human foibles, castigating hypocrisy, selfishness, ambition, and envy.
  • Satire: Displays ingenuity and wit, criticizing and distorting things grotesquely. He targets contemporary figures, writers, styles (especially Góngora’s Culteranismo), and myths.

Prose:

  • Los Sueños: Five dream narratives, reprinted as *Juguetes de la niñez*. Quevedo uses dreams to critique customs and society, offering a burlesque yet critical view of Spanish society with elaborate language.
  • El Buscón: A picaresque novel masterpiece. Don Pablos, son of a thieving barber and a sorceress, faces cruel teasing and enters the service of a student. He learns of his uncle’s execution and his father’s thievery, goes to Segovia to collect an inheritance, then moves to Madrid, where he commits misdemeanors and ends up in jail. He participates in a death and intends to go to the Indies. His condition does not improve, and there is no moral.

The New Comedy

Lope de Vega introduced innovations in his plays, outlined in his *New Art of Making Plays*:

  1. Disregard for the three unities of time, place, and action.
  2. Structure in three acts: exposition, complication, and resolution.
  3. Mixing tragedy and comedy in the same play.
  4. Writing plays in verse.
  5. Using polymetry depending on the situation (e.g., *décimas* for complaints).
  6. Employing *decorum* in language, adjusting it to each character’s status.
  7. Including dances and popular songs.

Themes:

  • Intricate plots that maintained the audience’s attention.
  • National and popular themes from Spanish traditions and legends.
  • Themes of love and jealousy.
  • Religious themes from the Bible or saints’ lives.

The Theme of Honor:

Initially, honor was associated with heroes’ fame and virtues. In the Baroque period, it focused on marital fidelity. The victim could take revenge, unless the offender was the king. Lope extended this to rich villains, exalting the monarchy. Honor was also linked to purity of blood, as offended fathers or husbands reaffirmed their old Christian status.

Social Value:

Theater was a popular spectacle that entertained and taught behavioral patterns. It was valued for defending the monarchy, maintaining social status, affirming Spanish military hegemony, and upholding Catholic standards.

Characters:

  • King: Authority figure who provides justice.
  • Nobleman: Powerful, often abuses power.
  • Galán: Handsome, brave, and generous young nobleman.
  • Lady: Beautiful, of noble lineage.
  • Old Man/Father/Husband/Brother: Zealous for honor, may avenge disgrace.
  • Honest Peasant: A Christian farmer.
  • Gracioso: Essential comic character, materialistic, charlatan, lower social level, likes to drink, uneducated, cowardly, boastful, and loyal to his master. He may fall in love with his master’s lady’s maid, creating a parallel comedic subplot.

Composition of Corrals:

Performances were held in tenement courtyards. The public sat on balconies and windows. The top-floor windows were the attics, and the lower chambers were under the stands. Women sat at the bottom of the first floor. There were also standing spectators, the *mosqueteros*, who were noisy and influenced the play’s reception. The stage was initially simple, later refined. Performances were in the afternoon, initially on Sundays or holidays, later also on weekdays. The function began with a *loa* to attract attention, followed by an *entremés* between acts 1 and 2, a *jácara* between acts 2 and 3, and a dance at the end.

Lope de Vega’s Theater

Lope de Vega is considered the creator of 17th-century Spanish national theater.

Works:

  • Comedies of Spanish History and Legend: *Fuenteovejuna*, *Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña*.
  • Foreign Affairs: *El Gran Duque de Moscovia*.
  • Cloak and Sword: *El perro del hortelano*, *El amor discreto*.

Features:

  • Themes: Love, honor, religious or monarchical ideals. Lope defended the crown and aristocratic society, supporting honest rural life.
  • Dramatic Action: Broke the Aristotelian rule of three unities, divided the work into three days, creating lively and dynamic works.
  • Language and Versification: Used polymetry to reflect scene changes, employing popular language that could be elaborate.
  • Popularity: Understood popular sentiment, incorporating traditional lyrical compositions, which contributed to his success.