Baroque in Spain: Culture, Festivities, and Poetry

Baroque Culture in Spain

Patronage and Official Culture: During this period, the monarchy and privileged groups devoted themselves to patronage. Official culture was primarily in the hands of universities and colleges. There were also smaller gatherings in colleges and academies focused on artistic and scientific matters.

However, as most of the population was illiterate, information was transmitted orally and visually. This explains the rise of religious instruction through sermons, images, and festivals. In science, Spain did not experience much progress; only at the end of the 17th century were there some notable movements.

Baroque Festivities

Court festivals were organized to exalt the power of the nobility. Religious festivities included *auto sacramental* representations, and popular comedies. Festivities were held for religious reasons, but there were also fairs and family celebrations.

Themes and Trends in Baroque Poetry

• Amorous Poetry: Retrieves the Petrarchan model (description of women, frustrated love, mythology, etc.).
• Philosophical and Moral Poetry: Marked by pessimism and disappointment, it emphasizes the contrast between reality and appearance, the fugacity and brevity of life, death, Stoic ideas, and the need for a virtuous life.
• Religious Poetry: Focuses on spiritual reflection, repentance, and commemorative themes.
• Burlesque Poetry: Characterized by parody and abundant humor, often including ridicule and personal attacks.

Luis de Góngora

Poetic Work:

• Minor Art: *Romances* and *letrillas*.
• Sonnets: Love, burlesque, religious, and moral (disappointment and brevity of life).
• Major Poetry: *Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea* and *Solitudes*, with extraordinary expressive refinement.

Style: Abundant mythological references and accumulation of cultured lexicon and resources.

Lope de Vega

Poetic Work:

• *Romances*: Moorish themes, pastoral, religious, and moral.
• Petrarchan love poetry.
• Mythological and epic poems: *Rhymes*, *The Dragontea*, *The Beauty of Angelica*.
• Religious poetry of devotion, confession of guilt, and repentance: *Sacred Rhymes*, *Divine and Human Rhymes of the Lawyer Tomé de Burguillos*.

Style: Influence of Renaissance stylistic features, simplicity of expression, although also incorporating conceptualist resources and imitation of Góngora.

Francisco de Quevedo

Poetic Work:

• Petrarchan love poetry.
• Metaphysical and moral poetry: Influence of Stoic and Christian morality, transience of life, deceitfulness of appearances, awareness of death. Censure of the vices of his time, defending virtue.
• Satirical and burlesque poetry: Critical of customs, human and social types, degradation of myths from Petrarchan and heroic poetry.
• Circumstantial or praise poems and descriptive poems.

Style:

• Serious or severe poetry: Cultism, hyperbolic and admonishing tone.
• Satirical and burlesque poetry: Degrading metaphors, dilogies, puns, hyperbole, vulgar and colloquial register.
• Lexical creation and parody of clichés.