Spain's Golden Age: Renaissance and Baroque Influence

Spain in the Golden Age

The Golden Age in Spain extended approximately from the end of the reign of the Catholic kings to the death of Charles II. At this time, Spain reached its maximum political and territorial splendor. Through marriages with the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire, Portugal was added to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. An immense empire was progressively dismembered from the last quarter of the sixteenth century. However, in the seventeenth century, Spain was still a great power. Spain was involved in many wars that affected its culture and economy. This was especially true in literature, making it the most important period in the history of Spain.

Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Europe experienced a great interest in the reform of religious orders. One of the most influential authors was the Dutchman Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose main lines of thought coincided with other reformist currents. These included a return to the Christianity of the Gospels, which led him to criticize the political and economic power of the Church. The Catholic Church celebrated the Council of Trent to curb the various Protestant reforms and initiate their own religious reform. This would be the starting point of the Counter-Reformation.

The Spanish Language in the Golden Age

During this period, Spanish (Castilian) acquired, both in pronunciation and vocabulary, much of its current features. In 1492, Nebrija composed a Castilian grammar, assuming that Castilian had reached a degree of perfection. He thought that Castilian would disappear and that, thanks to its grammar, future speakers of another universal language could rebuild it. Castilian then became the most important of the Romance languages, and excellent dictionaries were composed, such as The Treasure of the Spanish Language by Sebastián de Covarrubias.

Renaissance

Renaissance thought has two basic aspects:

• The flowering of humanism, which involves an assessment of man above any other reality.
• Adaptation of classical culture as a model.

The Renaissance is considered a movement to become republics. This required a background in rhetoric and knowledge that were present only in medieval society. The Renaissance ideal of the knight must meet certain physical, moral, and intellectual virtues. He must be agile and strong, skilled in weapons and horsemanship. He must also be a skilled dancer, musician and singer, a good creator and literary critic, witty in conversation, and a good lover. In Spain, the Renaissance came later than in Italy but took root strongly from the work of the humanist and grammarian Elio Antonio de Nebrija. Mannerism is considered a movement of transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque. This current situation is a reaction to classicism, characterized by the rejection of rigid rules and the liberal use of forms.

The Baroque

The Baroque covers topics like heartbreak or life as a dream. Another subject in the period was honor. Regarding religious and philosophical ideas, in Spain, the Baroque was a period of conservatism and caution in freedom of expression, in the wake of the Council of Trent. The main feature of the Baroque is artifice, the concealment of reality in order to admire, amaze, and deceive. The Discreet, by Baltasar Gracian, is the piece that best reflects what purported to be the Baroque model. In literature, the Renaissance and the Baroque are opposed to the conception of the literary work and, above all, with respect to language.