The Baroque Era: Culture, Art, and Literary Movements

The Baroque Era: A Period of Profound Change

The Baroque was a cultural and artistic movement that developed during the seventeenth century. This period coincided with a time of serious economic, social, and political challenges.

Causes of Decline in the Baroque Period

• Misery and depopulation of the interior.
• The expulsion of the Moriscos.
• Monarchs left government in charge of "validos" (favorites).
• Bankruptcy and decreased arrival of American resources.

Thought and Culture in the Baroque

The Baroque was a period marked by disappointment and pessimism. Humanistic ideals were abandoned, and there was a turn towards religion. However, a deep awareness of the crisis was reflected in a culture of violent contrasts. This fostered a taste for the "rebuscado" (elaborate/complex) in 17th-century individuals, who oscillated between resignation and rebellion against their circumstances (a "disappointed vitalism").

Artistic expressions, having exhausted the expressive resources of the Renaissance, resorted to exaggeration and force. Art and literature served as means of escape and propaganda. Despite the crisis, it was a cultural heyday. Great writers often adopted the following attitudes:

• Dominance of the senses, joyful vitalism.
• Distressed and disappointed, yet resigned acceptance of life.

Baroque Literary Themes

• Metaphysical, Moral, and Religious Poetry

  Many authors during this era wrote poems and reflections that mirrored their disillusioned concerns about the conception of life. There was a humanization of religious feeling, where the religious merged with the metaphysical and the mortal.

• Love Poetry

  This was very abundant. Themes of courtly love and Petrarchan tradition survived, but were taken to a higher intensity. Love appeared linked to the prevailing conception of the moment.

• Satirical and Burlesque Poetry

  This abounded in the songbooks of the era. The object of these satires could be a particular character, or the vices and habits of the time.

Baroque Poetic Methods

Metric

• Italian verses (hendecasyllables and combinations).
• Castilian verse (octosyllables).
• Romances.

Expressive Resources

• Metaphors.
• Cultisms.
• Hyperbole.
• Puns.

Poetic Currents of the Baroque

Culteranismo

This poetic current is named after one of its most characteristic features: cultisms. Its key features are:

• Cultisms.
• Abundant use of Latinate vocabulary and colorful syntax.
• Employment of rhetorical figures.

Conceptismo

Based on the ingenious and surprising association of ideas and words. Its features are:

• Rationalist vocabulary.
• Creation of new words.
• Oxymoron and rhetorical figures.