Baroque Literature: Culteranismo, Conceptismo, and Key Genres
Summary of the Baroque: Culteranismo and Conceptismo
They see a deep vital skepticism that causes a flight in two directions: the conceptual and the cultured Renaissance. Both upset the balance and come to similar literary devices: the device and the difficulty in style, exaggeration and contrast, the challenge of surprise…
Culteranismo
Maximum Representative: Luis de Góngora. It seeks to create a cultured poetic language of its own. It tends to the formal beauty and the colorful sensorial brilliance. It is achieved thanks to the careful preparation of the language and the use of various resources present in the Renaissance.
Conceptismo
Maximum Representatives: Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián. It tends to abbreviation and density and looks for expressive acuity and wit. It uses paradoxes, games, and word association…
The Poetry
The Metric: This and the Italian forms invite formal instruments that remain the same, but now will reflect other content, new ideas, and feelings with different forms. Along with Italian forms, metric compositions abound in Castilian. Popular lyrical forms are revitalized. The *letrillas*, ballads, carols… used by Lope or Góngora. The topics are diverse and will accommodate the new concept of the loving era.
- Love Poetry: Petrarchism is overcome and renovated, but leaves a legacy, by the experiences of authors like Lope or Quevedo.
- Moral and Metaphysical Poetry: Issues such as retired life, the passage of time, the ephemeral nature of beauty, and reflections on existence and disappointment.
- Religious Poetry: Moved by the devotion and piety of poets like Lope.
- Satirical-Burlesque Poetry: Where types and characters, myths, bad habits, and customs are parodied and questioned.
Prose
Distinguished are the picaresque novel, the novella, the Byzantine, and the allegorical *novella costumbrista*. Started by Cervantes and the *Novelas ejemplares*. Several collections of this type of novel were published. Topics may be varied. María de Zayas (Exemplary and Loving Novels) and Christopher Lozano (Solitudes of Life and Disappointments of the World).
- The Byzantine Novel: Works that are derivations of the previous century’s Byzantine novel: The Pilgrim at Home, Lope de Vega, who also cultivated the short story genre and the allegorical novel.
- Pastoral Novel: Baltasar Gracián with The Critic.
- The Novel of Manners: Reflects environments, types, characters, customs, and ways of life. Sometimes the pages are more descriptive and picturesque in character. In other cases, there is much further humor and social satire. It may also have a didactic or moralizing intention. Agustín de Rojas (The Entertaining Trip) and Luis Vélez de Guevara (The Lame Devil).
The Picaresque Novel
In Lazarillo de Tormes, the narrative begins the movement toward realism and opens the picaresque novel, an indigenous genre that will have its peak in the 17th century. Mateo Alemán with Guzmán de Alfarache and Vicente Espinel with Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón, and works such as Estebanillo González, anonymous, and El Buscón by Francisco de Quevedo, enshrined the genre.
Features
- The story takes place in the first person; the actor gives an account of his life. This is a false autobiography.
- The narrative structure is open; the various adventures are independent events recounted, though this now has a realistic character origin.
- The rogue is dishonorable and ignoble.
- The rogue does not usually improve his social standing.
- His evil acts tend to end.
- Picaresque works can be seen to have some moralistic tones.