Renaissance Literary Genres: Byzantine, Moorish, Pastoral
Renaissance Literary Genres
In the middle of the action scenes, chivalrous bucolic-pastoral elements appear. Although the model of Ariosto does not disappear, new innovations will emerge in the 16th century: a trend towards plot concentration, moralization of settings, and nationalization of plots and cases.
- The Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: The theme focuses on the siege of Jerusalem in the 11th century, emphasizing Christian and moral aspects.
- Os Lusiadas by Camoes: The theme is the epic Portuguese maritime expansion.
- Ercilla: Tells the story of the conquest of Chile, giving great importance and noble dignity to the enemies.
Byzantine Novels
Their appearance is in the manuscripts found in the early 16th century. In Heliodorus’s stories, a very noble and pure couple is separated and tries to reunite, facing many characters. Movement will lead to many geographical, real, or imagined places. The lovers will eventually be happily joined.
It tends to promote the truth, which will be of great importance for the central Renaissance, continuing what Aristotle says in his Poetics: the genres have to be truthful. The genre will be of great importance in 17th-century France, including elements from the Byzantine novel, books of chivalry, and pastoral books.
Moorish Material
This material can be found in both long and short genres. This type of literature was developed in Spain and then spread. After clearing, the enemy is idealized and used for literature.
Its antecedents are the *fronterizos* romances of the late 15th century, where Muslims appeared as knights, or written from a Moorish viewpoint.
Muslims are idealized in narratives at the end of the 16th century, around 1560, when a short story about The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa appears, followed by others of the same type.
The themes are the battles against Granada, ideal love with a Muslim character (a problem for the Christians), and an outpouring of aid and charity (showing their superiority) so that love can be consummated. There are separate texts, but they also appear interspersed in other larger works.
The genre offers a variant with a closer reality: the Moorish captive novel. The background story is that of a Christian captive in North Africa who organizes an escape plan and lives a love story involving a beautiful, noble, generous young Muslim woman who may leave her land and flee with the Christian and then convert to Christianity.
In 1595, we find the first part of The Civil Wars of Granada by Gines Perez de Hita. It is important because Perez de Hita participated in the repression of the Alpujarras uprising. Here, the final phase of the kingdom of Granada is recreated with the same luxurious style, up to the bloody confrontation between the two major aristocratic lineages of Nasrid Granada. A series of romances are interspersed with heroic fighting between Christians and Muslims, drawing a totally idealized picture, far from the author and his readers, that hides a germ of what will be European Orientalism. This book was a great success, with up to 60 prints made. It will result in works such as Chateaubriand’s *The Last Abencerrage*.
Pastoral Genre
Covering all genres, it is the most successful in the modern age. It connects with the recovery of the classics and interest in the myth of the Golden Age, contrasting the city and the court as the seat of intrigue, which helps us move towards the field, nature, and essence. That myth lasted from the late 15th to the 18th century.
The classical antecedents are Theocritus’s pastoral literature, which develops a popular tone linked to the nature of Sicily.
In Virgil’s pastoral Eclogues, an ideal of life appears, in harmony with nature and restoring the world.