Spanish Golden Age Literature: Key Authors and Works
Literary Works of the Spanish Golden Age
Key Authors and Their Masterpieces
- Fernando de Rojas: Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quixote de la Mancha
- San Juan de la Cruz (Juan Yepes): Dark Night, Spiritual Canticle, Living Flame of Love
- Santa Teresa de Jesus (Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada): Way of Perfection, Concepts of God’s Love
- Mateo Alemán: Guzmán de Alfarache (picaresque novel)
- Anonymous: Lazarillo de Tormes (picaresque novel)
- Bernal Díaz del Castillo: History of the Conquest of New Spain
- Hernán Cortés: Five Letters of Relation (first is lost)
- Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (Bernardino de Rivera): General History of the Things of New Spain
- Fray Toribio de Benavente “Motolinía”: Writings on the customs of the Indians in Guatemala
- Fray Bartolomé de las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- Luis de Góngora y Argote: Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, The Solitudes (poems)
- Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas: Constant Love Beyond Death, Dreams
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Poet and playwright from New Spain; works include The Efforts of a Home, Love is a Labyrinth, poems, stanzas, and quatrains.
- Juan Ruiz de Alarcón: Born in Taxco, studied in Spain; known for character portrayal, especially flaws. Works include The Walls Have Ears, Breasts Privileged, Suspected Truth, Making Friends, Move to Improve.
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca: Playwright who refined Lope de Vega’s theater model, focusing on a single protagonist and rhetorical devices. Works include Life is a Dream, The Daughter of the Air, The Great Theater of the World, The Mayor of Zalamea.
- Tirso de Molina: Known for complicated entanglements and intrigue. Works include The Trickster of Seville, The Diffident Convicted, The Shameful in the Palace.
Culteranismo: A Baroque Aesthetic
Culteranismo is a Spanish Baroque aesthetic that aims to refine expression, distinguishing it from the classics by dilating meaning for maximum aesthetic impact. It emphasizes sensory and scattered expression, primarily in lyric and verse.
The culterano style amplifies and paraphrases, delighting in intellectual enigmas. This aesthetic is also known as Gongorism, after its greatest exponent, Luis de Góngora of Córdoba.
Culteranismo’s outlines appeared in the early works of Luis de Góngora and the formal mannerism of poets like Bernardo de Balbuena and Luis Carrillo y Sotomayor.
Conceptismo: Ingenious Wordplay
Conceptismo is a stream of Spanish Baroque literature based on ingenious partnerships between words and ideas. Baltasar Gracián defined the “concept” as an act of understanding that expresses correspondence between objects. It is characterized by concise expression and semantic intensity, creating polysemic language through clever relations between words.
The Golden Age: A Period of Brilliance
The Golden Age represents the most brilliant and prolific period of the Spanish empire, renowned for its imperial rule and artistic and literary production.
Its beginning is marked by the publication of Nebrija’s Castilian grammar in 1492, and its end by Quevedo’s death in 1681.
The Golden Age aesthetic spans two periods: the 16th-century Renaissance (reigns of Ferdinand, Charles I, and Philip II) and the 17th-century Baroque (reigns of Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II). These periods are influenced by the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation.
Don Quixote is the most outstanding work of Spanish literature and the most important work of the Golden Age.
Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, Seville, and Toledo were the most important cities during this period.
The universities of Alcalá de Henares and Salamanca were centers of knowledge during this era.