Spanish Renaissance Literature: Key Authors and Works
Fray Luis de León
Fray Luis de León was born in Belmonte, Cuenca, in 1527. He entered the Augustinian order and graduated as a Doctor of Theology from the University of Salamanca. He secured a chair at the university but was jailed for five years for translating the Song of Songs into Castilian and defending the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. He was declared innocent, released, and resumed his university activities until his death in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Ávila, on August 23, 1591.
Poetry
Fray Luis’s poetry coincided with the rise of spiritual literature in the second half of the 16th century. His poetry includes 23 original poems, mostly written in liras. It was published in 1631 by Quevedo. His poetry is primarily moral, but a few poems are religious. His sources are the classical poetry of Horace and Virgil, with influences of Neoplatonism and Stoic philosophy. Fray Luis tends to use the topics of locus amoenus, vivere secum, and Beatus ille.
Style
Fray Luis’s poetic language highlights:
- Use of metaphors in relation to nature.
- Repetitions of words, anaphora, Latinisms, and cultisms like hyperbaton, polysyndeton, and asyndeton.
Prose Works
His prose works include Exposition of the Song of Songs (1798), Exposition of the Book of Job (1779), and The Perfect Wife (1583). Comments on biblical texts are found in The Names of Christ (1583). His prose work is important and is written in dialogue form.
Luisian Odes
These express wishes of solitude, inner peace, harmony, and communication with God. They try to find virtue. The best-known ode is La Vida Retirada.
San Juan de la Cruz
San Juan de la Cruz was born in Fontiveros, Ávila, in 1542 into a very poor family. He was christened with the name of Juan de Yepes y Álvarez. He studied at the University of Salamanca but left to join the Carmelite order. He was jailed for advancing the reform of the order, in which he held several positions throughout his life, especially in Andalusia. He died in Úbeda in 1591.
Poetry
His poetry emphasizes the use of minor art in songs, divine songs, ballads, and glosses, and three longer poems. Notable for their intensity and literary excellence, his poems express loving union with the divinity and include several poetic traditions: traditional lyric, classical, Italianate, and biblical.
Longer Poems
These poems use symbolic language based on human love to describe the ineffable nature of mystical experience. The three poems are written in liras:
- Flame of Love Alive
- Dark Night of the Soul
- Spiritual Canticle
Style
He uses symbols (human love and marriage, night, flame, air, light) and also uses comparisons, antitheses, oxymorons, and paradoxes.
Prose Works
The prose of St. John comprises four mystical treatises (statements) that gloss over poems: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night, Spiritual Canticle, and Flame of Love Alive.
Evolution of Renaissance Poetry
First Stage
In the 16th century, cancionero lyric dominated, and ballads and traditional poems were popular. Poetic renewal highlights the irruption produced by Petrarchan and classical influences, notably the work of Garcilaso de la Vega.
Second Stage
In the second half of the 16th century, the application of the principles of the Counter-Reformation produced important religious and cultural changes. These changes correspond with the rise of spiritual literature. These creations, inspired by biblical sources and classical and Italian influences, incorporated expressive forms and motifs from the first stage to develop moral or ascetic-mystical themes. Fray Luis de León and San Juan de la Cruz excel in religious poetry, addressing two spiritual paths:
- Ascetic: Through perfection for purification, it expresses the process leading to the union of the soul with God through three ways:
- The purgative, in which the soul is purified and freed from passion.
- The illuminative, in which the light of God guides the soul.
- The unitive, in which there is full union.
- Mystical: The mystical experience corresponds with the unitive way.
Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega was born in Toledo into an aristocratic family and was devoted to the service of King Charles I. In 1529, he accompanied the Spanish court in Bologna, and in 1531, he acted as a witness to a marriage prohibited by the monarch. In 1536, he was wounded in an assault on a fort and died in Nice.
Themes and Poetic Evolution
His subject is love expressed from melancholy and sadness due to frustration or lack of the beloved. He relates it to nature, presented in its perfection with the locus amoenus tag as a reflection of the inner world of the poetic self, sheltering its pain. Other poems address themes of friendship, fate, and fortune or the need to master passions. In his early poems, a Petrarchan style can be seen, with the influence of songs and the poetry of the Valencian poet Ausiàs March. These are written in a tone dominated by the most harrowing and lyrical resources of the cancionero.
Eclogues
These share themes such as love and suffering from having lost or not being returned.
- Eclogue 1: Contains the monologues of two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, about the pain produced by rejection and the death of the beloved.
- Eclogue 2: Focuses on the pain and madness of unrequited love, that of Albanio towards Camila. Albanio attempts suicide and tells of his misadventures. The second part contains praise for the deeds of the House of Alba.
- Eclogue 3: Tells the stories that four nymphs weave along the Tagus. Three are mythological stories (Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Daphne, and Venus and Adonis), and the fourth concerns the death of the beloved of Nemoroso, Elisa.
Style
His style is characterized by aspiring to a naturally expressive form, emphasizing the use of epithets, metaphors, personifications, and hyperbaton.