Spanish Golden Age Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Prose
Spanish Golden Age Literature
Poetry
Sonnets
Sonnets are structured in blocks, connecting sentences to lines and thoughts. Love themes include unrequited love, a lady’s harshness, disdain, jealousy, and mourning a loved one’s death.
Songs
Songs are poems often filled with love, sometimes featuring a chorus. Song III, written during exile, marks the first use of the locus amoenus. Song V, an ode to the flower of Knidos, depicts Garcilaso persuading a Neapolitan lady to accept a friend’s love, using the lyre stanza.
Drama
Early 16th-century theater featured popular pastoral eclogues and Italian-inspired comedies. Notable authors include Juan del Encina (theatrical eclogues), Gil Vicente (Two Duardos), and Lope de Rueda (short plays prefiguring appetizers). In the latter half, Juan de la Cueva and Lope de Vega innovated, paving the way for future dramatists.
Novel
The novel flourished in the 16th century. The first half saw the success of chivalric romances like Amadis of Gaul. The second half introduced:
- Byzantine Novels: Adventure stories centered on noble lovers, culminating in marriage.
- Adventure Novels: Featuring travel and escapades, such as those by Jerónimo Contreras.
- Picaresque Novels: Realistic characters like Lazarillo, marking the first modern novel with well-rounded characters.
- Pastoral Novels: Refined shepherds navigate love and disdain in idealized natural settings, employing rhetorical language and love themes, exemplified by The Seven Books of Diana.
- Moorish Novels: Idealized portrayals of the Arab world and Christian-Arab relations, like Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa.
Lazarillo de Tormes
Authorship and Background
The author of Lazarillo de Tormes is unknown, though Alfonso Valdés is a suspected candidate. Anonymity likely shielded the author from repercussions due to the book’s anti-clerical and Erasmian critique.
Plot and Structure
The novel comprises a prologue and seven treatises, structured as an epistolary and autobiographical account. Lazarillo, an anti-hero, navigates episodic encounters. The story’s folk origins suggest some episodes predate the written work.
Lazarillo writes to an unnamed recipient about rumors of his wife’s infidelity with the archpriest. To justify his situation, he recounts his life’s hardships.
Themes and Social Commentary
Deception and hunger drive Lazarillo’s learning experiences with various masters, all connected to religion. The narrative subtly critiques the clergy and religious hypocrisy. The concept of honor is also challenged, exposing its superficiality.
Lazarillo: A New Narrative Protagonist
Lazarillo, an ordinary man and anti-hero, contrasts sharply with traditional novelistic heroes. Ironically, the novel parodies chivalric tales by associating Lazarillo’s origins with a river.
Style and Language
Lazarillo de Tormes ushers in realism. The narrator employs literary devices like puns while maintaining a conversational tone. The language is vivid, colloquial, and infused with popular expressions. Irony underscores the protagonist’s critical perspective.
Lazarillo and the Picaresque Novel
While not initially conceived as picaresque, Lazarillo‘s social critique, veiled in humor and hardship, became a model for the genre. Key characteristics include:
- First-person narration
- Realistic setting
- Low-born protagonist
- Lack of social mobility
- Open-ended structure allowing for episodic additions