Renaissance Literary Themes and Spanish Mysticism

Understanding Literary Texts and Their Features

An exhibition is a kind of text meant to inform and provide knowledge to the receiver on a given topic. Through a narrative text, it can define a concept, explain a process, or classify a group of objects or living things.

Main Linguistic Features of Informative Texts

• Dominates the present tense and third person.
• Includes facts and figures.
• Uses adjectives.

The Renaissance: A Period of Transformation

The Renaissance is the historical period following the Middle Ages. It arose in Italy and has the following characteristics: it exalted earthly life. This vitalism is observed in the topic of carpe diem ('seize the day').

Knowledge began to be perceived as a way of improving human well-being. Humanism emerged. The values of the Renaissance took root, especially among the bourgeoisie, and spread through the press.

The Renaissance man sought a more intimate, direct communication with the divine. The Protestant Reformation and Spanish mystical poetry are expressions of this.

In Spain, Renaissance ideas were developed in the 16th century during the reigns of Charles I and Philip II. Renaissance literature begins with Garcilaso de la Vega's imitation of Petrarch around 1526 and culminates with the publication of the first part of Don Quixote.

Garcilaso de la Vega: Poet of Love

Garcilaso de la Vega is an author of a small body of poetry (38 sonnets and 3 eclogues) whose central theme is love. In his compositions, we find the different moments and nuances of the experience of love, modeled on Petrarch's songs: the pain of rejection or absence of the beloved, the turmoil of jealousy at their beauty, mourning for their death, and more.

To express these feelings, Garcilaso uses classical mythology. Plain verses and stanzas, taken from Petrarch and, in general, from Italian poets, were incorporated into Spanish poetry.

Eclogues

• Complaints are put in the mouths of shepherds who converse in the context of an idealized nature.
• Idealized place: locus amoenus.

Fray Luis de León: The Quest for Spiritual Peace

The main theme of Fray Luis de León's poetry is a desire to escape the world, seeking a spiritual peace that he struggles to find within it.

• Life in the field, expressed through the literary topic of beatus ille ('happy is he'), appears in his "Ode to the Retired Life."
• He also wrote a music-inspired ode to Francisco Salinas.

Saint John of the Cross: Mystical Union with God

The theme of Saint John of the Cross's poetry is the joyous union of lovers, a symbolic expression of the soul's encounter with God.

Saint John attempts, through love poems, to put into words the ineffable experience of direct communication with God, which is very difficult to express. The texts that reflect this experience belong to what is known as mystical literature.

Notable works include: Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, and Living Flame of Love.

The Picaresque Novel

The protagonists of these stories are rogues, very similar to Lazarillo in their traits and behaviors.