Spanish Golden Age Theater and Novel: Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón, Cervantes
Spanish Golden Age Theater and Novel
Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega: He created a dramatic new formula that triumphed in the Spanish art scene. His comedies are characterized by:
- Freedom in the choice of topic.
- Mixture of tragic and comic elements.
- Unity of action and freedom of place and time (apart from the classical unities).
- Division into three acts (compared to five in classical comedies: beginning, middle, and end).
- Verisimilitude in the characters’ speech, according to their social status.
- Adequacy of the message’s content (characterized by its varied strophic combinations).
- Preference for the theme of honor.
- Recurring characters (gallant, lady, funny servant, etc.).
Characters: The gallant (youth and beauty, idealism and generosity, patience and perseverance), the funny servant (gallant’s servant, defends his master, advisor and confidant, lover of the maid), single or married young lady (noble and virtuous, courage and constancy in love), the maid (funny confidant and partner of the lady), the powerful (unfair noble, generates conflict), the knight (father, husband, or brother of a fallen woman, tragic character), the villain (rich peasant), the king (young, unjust, and arrogant, can commit abuses).
Works: Fuenteovejuna (drama of unjust power) and The Dog in the Manger (drama of love).
Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina: Disciple of Lope, he created the myth of Don Juan in The Trickster of Seville. He is characterized by his skill in plotting, the use of humor and satire, and the reflection of contemporary reality.
Calderón de la Barca
Calderón: He perfected Lope’s formula, simplifying it by reducing unnecessary theatrical elements. He emphasized hierarchical formal perfection, grouping characters around a central figure. His language is baroque, and his stage design is key. He is known for his subjectivity and complex vision. He has two styles: one close to Lope and another that dominates theological, mythological, and philosophical themes.
Works: The Mayor of Zalamea, Life Is a Dream (theme: essential freedom of human beings, two parallel actions; Sigismund becomes king and prisoner, Rosa recovers her honor, ornate language, concepts, and culteranismo).
Modern Novel: Cervantes
Modern Novel: Cervantes wrote Don Quixote as a parody of chivalric romances, creating a new narrative genre. It has the following aspects:
- The humanity of the characters: Psychological complexity and evolution throughout the work. They do not respond to fixed patterns.
- Novelistic realism of the universe: Don Quixote develops in specific real time-space coordinates.
- Presence of various narrative voices: From the fiction created by Cervantes himself, the story was written by Cid Hamet Benengeli, based on writers and researchers in La Mancha. It was translated by a Moor and serves as the basis for a narrator in the third person. In the last chapter, he refers to oral sources.
- Perspectivism: Things are according to the standpoint from which different voices look. Examples are the narrators, the ambiguity of the protagonist’s character, and the dialogues between Sancho and Don Quixote.
Celestina Topics
Celestina Topics: Love, the basic theme: courtly (idealization of the beloved, infatuation and loss of freedom, madness of love) or illicit (purely for sex). Self-interest and profit motives (Celestina and servants), death (we all eventually die), the disloyalty of the servants (symbolically, the evolution of Parmeno), magic (Celestina’s witchcraft), social criticism. All this creates a pessimistic vision of life.