Spanish Golden Age Novels: Types and Key Examples

Spanish Golden Age Novels

The Idealistic Novel: The most abundant during the Renaissance, it tells the story of heroes in unrecognizable landscapes and among idealized people.

The Byzantine Novel: Also known as a novel of adventures. It recounts adventures that take place during a typical journey, often involving travel by boat to discover small islands and exotic landscapes. This novel represents a journey where a young protagonist must deal with multiple disabilities and handicaps. Key themes include pirates, storms, islands, and abduction.

The Pastoral Novel: Constitutes a journey where characters travel in search of happiness. Two types of actions are distinguished: one internal and slow, and another made up of stories of past shepherds. The characters are shepherds who share idealized courtly dialogues.

The Sentimental Novel: It develops the theme of platonic love and may include historical events, often using an epistolary narrative style.

The Moorish Novel: Set in Castile near the border with the last Muslim kingdom. It alternates between real and fictitious locations, often featuring pristine landscapes.

Lazarillo de Tormes: One of the most important works of Spanish literature, marking the beginning of the picaresque novel subgenre. It adopts a pseudo-autobiographical style to tell the miserable story of a character who serves various masters and possesses a picaresque character.

Lazarillo de Tormes: Structure

The narrative is divided into three modules representing different stages of Lazarillo's life:

• First Module (Childhood): Lazarillo serves a blind cleric, a squire, and others. He learns from the blind man, experiences increased hunger with the clergyman, and finds the squire to be his third master.
• Second Module (Adolescence): Lazarillo learns new arts of deception and falsehood, deepening his suffering. He serves a friar, a pardoner, a painter, and a tambourine maker.
• Third Module (Adulthood): Lazarillo serves a chaplain, a sheriff, and a dean.

Lazarillo de Tormes: Discourse

Lazarillo de Tormes is structured as a letter or epistle. The adult narrator, Lazarillo, tells his story to someone who has asked him to explain a particular case, which is not a love triangle. Lazarillo's letter constitutes an act of obedience.

Honor: A fundamental issue in the novel is honor, which depended on the consideration others had for an individual. This was a typical phenomenon of the time.

Religion: Five of Lazarillo's masters belong to the ecclesiastical establishment, generally representing its lower strata.