Spanish Baroque Literature: Góngora, Lope de Vega, Quevedo

Luis de Góngora

Along with the popular tradition, classical or Petrarchan, Góngora created the most innovative poetic language of the time. His difficult and minority-focused production led to both rejection and fiery polemics, as well as admiration and followers among his readers.

Poetry

Minor art and poetry of Petrarchan poetry:

• Minor Art: Letrillas, romances, and, above all, satirical and burlesque works.
• Sonnets: Themes of love and encouragement to enjoy life in the Petrarchan line, although amended by the consciousness of time. Others are comical, and a third group deals with disappointment and the transience of life.
• Major Poems: Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, and Solitudes. Polyphemus is based on the version offered by Ovid. Its main theme is love, emphasizing pastoral reasons for the importance of landscape description. The book is written in octaves.

Gongora's Style

Góngora's style is characterized by its difficulty, due to mythological allusions. He emphasizes the use of alliteration and paronomasia. Syntactic forms use long sentences and complex cultism. In the lexicon, cultism predominates, with associative fields and metaphors related to color and music.

Solitude: In these compositions, in *silvas*, the description of nature and rural work is emphasized, through a poetic language full of refined and expressive resources.

Lope de Vega

Lope was a man of extraordinary creative capacity, both in narrative and in theater and opera.

Poetry

His poetry includes minor art compositions (letrillas, carols, seguidillas, romances) and Italianate poetry (sonnets, songs, eclogues, letters).

Romances

Petrarchan type. Rimas (1602-1609) includes sonnets, as well as loving poems; there are also mythological, moral, and circumstantial poems.

Religious Poetry

Sacred Rhymes collected sonnets and other poems of excited devotion, confession of guilt, and regret.

Style

Lope de Vega's poetry expresses his experiences and feelings. In a classical style of expressive simplicity, he shows the continuation of earlier poetry, but also reveals his appreciation for the concept.

Francisco de Quevedo

Author of an extensive body of work that stands out for its quality and its wide range of topics, attitudes, language, meters, and registers, consistent with the literature of his time.

Poetic Themes

He wrote poems in both high art and minor art romances.

Love Poetry

Has its roots in the lyrical *cancionero* tradition and the beauty of the inaccessible beloved, and the plain suffering lover, loving madness.

Moral and Metaphysical Poetry

These poems reveal a profound disappointment. The author reflects on the brevity and distressing transience of life, the deceitfulness of appearances, and the inevitability of death: life is going to die.

Satirical Burlesque Poetry

Critiques customs and human and social types of the time. Outstanding are female figures within the misogyny of satire itself; he degrades classical myths and Petrarchan ideals.

Religious Poetry

Combines themes of religious poetry with moral poetry, repentance for their sins; in other poems, he reflects on the passion of Christ.

Style

Quevedo makes extreme use of rhetorical devices. Metaphors come from comparisons, antitheses, and contrasts. In satirical and burlesque poetry, abundant resources are designed to produce caricature and cause laughter. Colloquial expressions and common registers are used. He is also a master of lexical creation and modification of idioms and sayings, mostly for parodic purposes.

Baroque Prose

In the Baroque period, cultured prose included fictional narrative and intellectual prose, both didactic and moralizing, and often satirical. Highlights include:

• The Pastoral Novel
• Byzantine Novel
• Courtesan Novel

Didactic prose works include historical, political, and religious texts.