Spanish Literature: From Medieval Epics to the Golden Age
Epics
Epics stand out in France with the Songs of Roland, in England with Beowulf, and in Germany with the Nibelung. In Spain, during the Middle Ages, there was a long tradition of epic poetry in Castilian. These are historical stories written in verse, based on heroes. The most important thing for them is honor in a chivalrous society.
Sources: These epics were created from different sources: the carmina maiiorum, the French epic, and Arab-Andalusian epics and folklore. The literary tradition of minstrelsy, or the art of the minstrels, is anonymous. These works were transmitted orally to the public. We have many songs today thanks to prosifications, romances, and medieval chroniclers.
Cycles: There are three cycles:
- The Counts of Castile, which contains the Song of Fernán González and the Song of the Seven Infants of Lara.
- El Cid: This cycle includes the Song of King Ferdinand.
- Charlemagne: This cycle includes the Song of Roncesvalles, Mainete, and Bernardo del Carpio.
Primitive Lyric
Primitive lyric poetry arose in Galicia and Portugal, with poetic demonstrations in Castilian romance language with music. Almost all topics are related to love. It has influences from Andalusian lyric poetry and Provençal troubadours.
Types of Primitive Lyric
1. Galician-Portuguese Lyric
This lyric has come down to us through manuscripts and songbooks.
Types of songs:
a) Love: Expressive of courtly love, these songs are of a cultured and complex composition.
b) Escarnio and Maldizer: These are popular, witty satires that make fun of everyone.
c) Cantigas de Amigo: Poems about the absence of love, expressed from a woman’s perspective. They have a lyrical, folk, and traditional style, similar to Provençal lyric poetry, with a parallel structure.
d) Curse: Satirical with a moral intention.
2. Traditional Castilian Lyric
This lyric spans five centuries (13th-17th) and is collected in songbooks. The themes are very similar to those of the Galician-Portuguese lyric, such as absent love and young love. It also includes Mozarabic jarchas.
3. Sephardic Lyric
This lyric is older than the Castilian and Galician-Portuguese. Despite the expulsion from Spain, it continued through traditional songbooks to accompany births, weddings, and ceremonies.
Juan de Mena
He is considered the first Spanish humanist. His most important work is Labyrinth of Fortune, composed of three hundred verses of high art, dodecasyllables in octaves. Similar to the Divine Comedy, it is an allegorical poem that tells us about the palace of fortune with three wheels that move the world: two immobile (the past and the future) and one in motion (the present). This work is dedicated to the king.
Marqués de Santillana
His most important works, influenced by Italian literature, try to follow the style of Dante’s allegorical Comedy, such as Comedieta de Ponza and Hell of Lovers. Some of his most outstanding works, known for their grace and spontaneity, are Old Sayings That Say After the Fire, Serranillas, Songs, and Sayings. The ten Serranillas are inspired by short courtly poems but incorporate folk traditions and the influence of troubadour nature worship.
San Juan de la Cruz
His work is very short, consisting of a few intense poems inspired by the mystical experience, the Cantigas de Amigo, and the Song of Songs of Solomon. He wrote Spiritual Canticle in four-line stanzas, where the wife (the soul) searches for her husband (God). In Dark Night of the Soul, the soul is stripped of all earthly attachment to join with God. Spiritual love and religious experience lead to the creation of The Living Flame of Love. In Ascent of Mount Carmel, his words sound melodic and passionate, using the forms of traditional song.
Santa Teresa de Jesús
She was a woman with a strong personality and very clear ideas. She wrote several prose works: The Book of Her Life (autobiographical), The Way of Perfection (on how to be holy), and The Book of Foundations. In her lyric poetry, she demonstrates a religious experience and uses traditional methods, reflecting mystical rapture, as in “I Live Without Living in Me.”
Idealist Novels
1. Romances of Chivalry
These novels deal with the major fictional themes of Europe, such as the heroes of the Matter of Britain: King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, who had been treated in France with characters like Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. Characters and motifs of folk origin or belonging to other literatures were also added, such as Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France, and two great heroes, Oriana and Amadís. The nostalgia for the chivalric ideal and the desire for entertainment are the reasons for the popularity of this genre. Some Spanish novels, such as Palmerín de Oliva and Amadís of Gaul, were translated into other languages.
2. Byzantine Novels
This is a narrative genre that has its origins in Hellenistic and Latin literature. Its plot consists of an adventure story with travel over a large geographical area, usually separated by the sea. In Spain, this novel was rediscovered in the Renaissance and was used by Cervantes in his later novels, such as The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda.
3. The Pastoral Novel
This novel focuses on the new tastes of the audience and the narrative tradition. Its sources are represented by the classical lyric poets Virgil and Theocritus and the Renaissance Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio.
Features of the pastoral novel:
- Mixture of prose and verse with the presence of dialogue.
- The theme of love: idealistic, natural, or Neoplatonic.
- Space and characters represented by refined shepherds.
- The action slowly comes to an end by means of magic.
Successful pastoral novels in Spain include The Seven Books of Diana and Diana in Love.
La Celestina
La Celestina is one of the jewels of Spanish literature. It was written by Fernando de Rojas in the late 15th century. The first known edition was printed in Burgos in 1499 with the title Comedy of Calisto and Melibea. It had two acts and a summary of the plot, but no author’s name. In 1500, a second edition was published in Toledo, which included the name of the author, Fernando de Rojas, a letter from the author to his friend, the general argument of the whole work, and later editions included acrostic verses. The work was expanded with acts ranging from 14 to 15 in the first edition, with the final version having 21 acts, as it is known today. It also includes a new foreword with a justification for the additions. The final title is Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea. It is believed that Fernando de Rojas wrote the entire work, except for the first act and the beginning of the second, whose author is unknown.
Language and Style
The language clearly reflects the speaking style of the characters, suggesting the authorship of two people. The language shows the influence of the humanistic current, and all characters are capable of using a cultured language with Latin expressions. It has many parallelisms, antitheses, anaphors, and enumerations, resulting in an elegant, often complex style. It also includes colloquial, sometimes vulgar and bold speech, with great wisdom in proverbial language, sayings, and phrases.
Intention of La Celestina
The author claims that this is a work to prevent mad love, and thus it has a moral purpose.
Characters
There are two groups of people with different interests:
1. The nobles: Melibea and Calisto. These characters are driven by their idealistic thoughts.
2. The servants: Sempronio, Pármeno, Celestina, Elicia, and Areúsa. These characters are materialistic and selfish, and they accuse the rich of only caring about themselves.
Calisto: A young man of noble lineage, with wit and a gentle disposition. He fights for his beloved Melibea, overcoming social barriers. Only when he satisfies his desire does he return to reality and regret the death of his servants.
Melibea: Shows great psychological development in the work. She is elusive but not naive, as she shows her senses and surrenders to passion. She confuses her parents, Pleberio and Alisa, and shows them another side. When her lover dies, she commits suicide.
Celestina: The most complex character. She is a 70-year-old woman with experience in getting out of all situations. She defends herself with guile and teaches the characters how to handle their surroundings. She leads them where she wants to get more benefits and uses her arts of witchcraft to drive them to tragedy.
The servants: Sempronio is greedy and mean, moved by material interests. Pármeno was a faithful servant who wanted the best for his master until he was seduced by Areúsa’s money. Elicia and Areúsa, Celestina’s maids, are driven by envy and the instinct for revenge against the rich.
The Picaresque Novel
The picaresque novel began in the 16th century with Lazarillo de Tormes and continued in the mid-17th century with Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache. The fundamental features of this national genre, due to its atmosphere and aesthetic orientation, are:
1. The Rogue: An idler of ignoble origin who lives at the expense of others, through charity, good faith, theft, or scams. Sometimes he decides to work, but it always ends badly.
2. Psychological Condition: Everything conspires against the rogue due to the low living environment in which he exists. He is beaten by his peers, leading to bitter pessimism and distrust of others. However, he is limited to suffering without complaint and waiting for the opportune moment for revenge.
3. Moralizing Reflection: The rogue highlights his moral wrongfulness, stating that he is sentenced to justify his behavior by insisting on the weakness of human nature.
4. Satirical Element: The rogue attacks everyone around him, including beggars, vagrants, and swindlers, due to cowardice and resentment towards his class.
5. Humor: Varies according to the author, but the most characteristic is that of El Buscón and Guzmán, which is sour and pervaded by pessimism due to the protagonist’s psychology.
6. Language: Initially a spontaneous and natural expression, but Baroque trends caused it to lose some of its primitive simplicity, becoming involved with rhetoric, as seen in El Buscón and Guzmán de Alfarache.
7. Realistic Orientation: One of the most notable features of the picaresque, but it gives way to a trend toward stylization and misrepresentation.
Francisco de Quevedo (Prose)
His works are classified into these sections:
1. Festive Works
These are brief works written with a comic character in his youth, such as Epistles of the Knight of the Grip and Letter from a Cuckold to Another.
2. Moral-Satirical Works
Using the old procedure of dreams, Quevedo directs his satire against a decadent and phantasmagorical society in Dreams of Carnations and The Pigsty of Plato.
3. Narrative Works
The Life Story of the Swindler Called Don Pablos is a picaresque novel published simultaneously, narrating the life of the rogue Pablos. In this novel, he draws a pessimistic picture of wealth, using cruel and dehumanizing verbal games, agile and concise sentences, antitheses, irony, hyperbole, and a stylized, distorted, and caricatured vision.
4. Doctrinal Prose Works
These works have a moral and political content with an ascetic tone, posing a reflection on the meaning of life and death. Examples include The Cradle and the Grave, which emphasizes his patriotic fervor, and The Politics of God, the Government of Christ, and the Tyranny of Satan.
5. Literary Criticism
These are short works that mock the Gongorist style. They stand out for their cultured and educated Latinized language.