Spanish Baroque Literature and the Golden Age

The Baroque is characterized by subjectivism and a thoughtful, serious attitude toward important topics. It adopts a pessimistic view of human beings, focusing on life, death, destiny, and freedom. This attitude has much to do with the profound spiritual, social, and political crisis of the era, resulting in a case of deep disenchantment and a disillusioned vision of life. The Carpe diem motif evolves into Sic transit, acquiring high drama during the Baroque period.

The Spanish Golden Age

During this era, there are constant conflicts of interest among the nobility, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie. Emigration from rural areas to cities is accentuated, creating a situation of failure and disorientation. Despite this, our country produced a literature as splendid in quantity as in quality. This century, alongside the sixteenth century, constitutes the Golden Age, featuring geniuses such as Cervantes, Góngora, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo.

Classical and Baroque Styles

The Baroque style has often been considered the opposite of Classicism. In literature, Classicism is reflected in direct expression, a natural look of elegance, and the appearance of spontaneity, avoiding artificial and overly ornamental expression. In contrast, the Baroque is characterized by a language identifying the literary function. The language experiences higher elaboration and tends toward rhetorical forms, with an abundance of resources as varied as:

• Alliteration
• Paronomasia
• Hyperbaton
• Strange lexicon

These resources serve to express a vision of the world from a dynamic, artificial, and enhancing perspective.

Conceptismo and Culteranismo

Both styles show the desire of the writer to excel in verbal skill and wit, rising above the vulgar forms of everyday speech to be included in an "intellectual aristocracy."

Conceptismo relies on the association of ideas (concepts), basing itself on allusions and nuances that give rise to expressive resources such as irony, paradox, and disingenuous wordplay.

Culteranismo focuses its interest on the dazzling use of language and the "strange word." It seeks to amaze with unexpected novelty. The language is filled with neologisms and cultisms, and the discourse is built on the accumulation of formal resources. Both styles greatly hinder the comprehension of the message and call for an educated reader to base their aesthetic pleasure in an intellectual abstraction.

Baroque Poetry and Its Themes

Themes, forms, and metric genres remain from the sixteenth century, although the range has expanded to cover everything from popular forms to the most learned. This includes satirical, religious, and epic poetry, while love poetry continues the Petrarchan tradition. It remains faithful to intensifying mythological links; the Greco-Roman world is presented as a way of escape from reality. It is a field where the poet displays their knowledge of the ancient world, their erudition, and their humanistic education. The great poets of the moment include Lope de Vega, Góngora, and Quevedo.