Spanish Literature: Renaissance to Baroque

Spanish Literature: From Renaissance to Baroque

Mannerism

As a movement of transition between the Renaissance and Baroque, Mannerism was used to define elaborate artists' works. This current arises as a reaction to classicism, characterized by the rejection of rigid rules and the free use of forms. Based on literary theory, a clear example is in the sonnets of Góngora and Lope.

Baroque

There was a great development of poetry. Everything could be poetic material. It is a poetry of contrasts because there is a meditative face, a difficult and misleading world, and almost every issue addressed from a mock perspective. Sonnet and romance are common forms.

The essential feature of the Baroque mentality is distrust in itself. Topics such as disappointment or life as a dream reveal this obsession. Another recurring theme in the epoch is that of honor. As for the religious and philosophical ideas, the Baroque was a period in Spain of conservatism and caution. The essential feature of Baroque aesthetic life is the device, so admirable, surprising, and ultimately deceptive. The Discreet, by Baltasar Gracián, is the work that best reflects what was intended as the Baroque model of behavior.

Sixteenth-Century Poetry: Stages and Flows

• From 1511 to 1543: When the works of Boscán and Garcilaso were published. Follow cancionero verses of poetry. The central theme of the lyric is called "courtly love."
• From 1543 until 1580: The spread of new Renaissance poetry.

New Forms

• The Sonnet: This is composed of two rhyming quatrains -ABBA ABBA- and two triplets with variable rhymes -CDE CDC DCD-. The most common theme is love.
• The Petrarchan Composition: Consists of several stanzas, called estancias, formed by hendecasyllables and heptasyllables adopting combinations.
• The Trio Chained: ABA BCB CDC.
• The Eighth Real: This is an ABABABCC verse, epic and descriptive par excellence.
• The Lira: Hendecasyllables and heptasyllables, aBabB rhyme.

Culteranismo

Resources used by Góngora: beautification through metaphors, hyperbaton, cultism, and allusions to mythology.

The Concept

Literary trends which use the concept of correspondence between objects. Puns, paronomasias, dialogical. Representative: Quevedo.

Schools and Baroque Poets

• School of Seville: Herrera as a model. Representatives: Arguijo, Juan Francisco de Rioja, and Andrés Fernández.
• School of Antequera-Granada: Pedro Espinosa and Luis de Góngora.
• Aragonese School: The brothers Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo.
• School of Madrid: Many poets such as Lope de Vega and Quevedo.

Fiction Poetry

Its purpose is to entertain. The prose fiction of the sixteenth century covers the pastoral, the Byzantine, and the Moorish. Lazarillo de Tormes is emphasized.

The Pastoral Novel

No authentic pastoral lifestyle exists; it is like making noble pastors. Around 1559, Seven Books of The Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese author who wrote in Castilian, was published. This work paved the way for the genre of so-called "books of pastors." In Montemayor's work, salient features of the pastoral are given: the idealization of nature and love, expressed through a calm and melancholic language.

The Moorish Novel

When the situation of the Moors in Granada was about to explode in rebellion, literature idealized the figure of the Moor and the fraternization between the Muslim and Christian. The text that released this fashion was The Abencerraje.

The Byzantine Novel

Byzantine novels are called adventure novels. The argument takes the form of a pilgrimage, during which adventures are interspersed with loving action. The first Spanish grower of this genus was Alonso Núñez de Reinoso. The most important Byzantine novels are The Pilgrim in His Homeland by Lope, and Persiles and Sigismunda by Cervantes.