Spanish Baroque Literature: Key Features, Themes, and Authors
Spanish Baroque Literature
Spanish Baroque literature is a literary period spanning approximately from the early works of Góngora and Lope de Vega in the 1580s until well into the eighteenth century. A characteristic of the 17th century is the Spanish literary baroque, which reached its zenith with prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, and playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca, as well as the poetic production of Quevedo, Lope, and Góngora.
The basic features of Spanish Baroque literature include a growing complexity in formal and thematic resources, focused on concern for the passage of time and loss of confidence in the ideals of the Renaissance Neoplatonists. There is a remarkable variety and diversity in the issues raised, attention to detail, and the desire to attract a broad audience, as exemplified by the rise of the new comedy lopesca. From the sensual dominant concern of the sixteenth century, there is a shift to an emphasis on moral values and teaching, with two currents: neostoicism and neoepicureanism. Gracián’s Criticón represents a reflection in the Baroque about man and the world, an awareness of disappointment, a vital pessimism (but not without hope), and a general crisis of values.
Renaissance is the name given to a broad cultural revitalization movement that occurred in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its main exponents are in the field of art, but it also saw renewal in literature and the sciences, both natural and human.
The Renaissance is the result of the dissemination of ideas of humanism, which determined a new conception of man and the world.
The name Renaissance was used because it incorporates elements of classical culture. The term symbolizes the revival of knowledge and progress after centuries of dominance by a dogmatic mentality set in the Europe of the Middle Ages. This new stage called for a new way of seeing the world and the human being, interest in the arts, politics, and science, revising and replacing medieval theocentrism with a certain anthropocentrism.
Themes and Forms of Baroque Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry reached high quality and variety in the seventeenth century. As a whole, baroque poetry presents great contrasts in theme (serious or inconsequential) and form (classical and popular). Góngora and Quevedo are the poets that best represent this variation. Metrically, the sonnet and romance reach great perfection, as well as the tenth (abab: ac: cdcd).
Conceptismo and Culteranismo
Traditionally, two styles are distinguished within Baroque literature: conceptismo and culteranismo. Conceptismo seeks a complicated expression, while culteranismo aims for a minority audience.
Conceptismo reflects the baroque aesthetic ingenuity in focusing on the game of ideas or concepts through antithesis, polysemies, paradoxes, etc.
Culteranismo, named after Góngora, aspired to create a poetic language different from the common language. Culteranismo is characterized by the intensification and accumulation of brilliant formal resources that pursue an embellished reality through abundant metaphors and images difficult to interpret, and hyperbole.