Spanish Literature of the 17th Century: Baroque and Middle Ages
17th-Century Spanish Literature
Baroque
The Baroque was an artistic and literary movement that originated in Italy during the late 16th and 17th centuries. It’s characterized by ornate style and a complex approach to form and substance.
The Baroque period saw a shift in perspective, with a negative view of the world and humanity leading to a sense of disappointment in many literary works. This led to the emergence of moralizing, satirical, and ascetic themes.
The Baroque style is known for its intricate and convoluted expression, often employing ingenious concepts and language.
Culteranismo and Conceptismo in Spain
In Spain, the Baroque manifested in two main trends: Culteranismo and Conceptismo. These opposing styles both sought formal complexity.
Culteranismo
Culteranismo aimed to create a world of beauty by emphasizing sensory values and meticulous attention to form. It employed expressive resources such as bold metaphors, hyperbaton, allusions to mythology, and more. The most prominent representative of Culteranismo was Luis de Góngora.
Conceptismo
Conceptismo placed greater emphasis on ideas and concepts (the substance) rather than the way they were expressed. Its main representative was Francisco de Quevedo.
16th-Century Poetry
The poetry of the 16th century is notable for the quality of its compositions. It reflects the breakdown of Renaissance harmony and balance, manifested in both form and themes, such as the inevitability of time, disappointment, and death.
Literary Genres
1. Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry offers a close and personal perspective that reveals a feeling, mood, or experience. Its primary function is emotive (poetic).
Major Genres:
- Oda: Extensive and elevated in tone. Expresses feelings or ideas in a rational and formal manner.
- Hymn: Intended for singing. Used to express patriotic or religious sentiments.
- Elegy: A long poem expressing grief, either individual or collective.
- Song: Typically expresses emotions related to love.
- Letter: Addresses philosophical or moral issues.
- Eclogue: Presented in the voices of shepherds. Expresses feelings of love and appreciation for nature.
Minor Genres:
- Sonnet
- Epigram
- Madrigal
- Lyric Romance
2. Epic or Narrative
In epic or narrative works, the author acts as a spectator, contemplating past events. We learn about the world indirectly through the story, influenced by the author’s imagination and sensitivity. The term “epic” is usually reserved for narrative works of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, written in verse.
Major Genres:
- Epic: A long verse narrative recounting great and memorable events.
- Epopee: Extensive in length, narrates the exploits of a national hero.
- Novel: A comprehensive and complex narrative that tells a complete story with a central character who confronts reality.
- Short Story: A brief and concentrated narrative focused on a single situation, often characterized by a surprise ending.
Minor Genres:
- Romance: An octosyllabic verse narrative unique to Hispanic literature.
- Fable: A short story with a didactic or moral purpose.
- Apologue: Similar to a fable, but with animals as the main characters.
3. Dramatic
Dramatic works offer a different perspective, removing the “I” of the author. The characters feel, act, and interact with each other, observed directly by the audience or reader of the play.
Major Genres:
- Tragedy: Features a tragic hero and a conflict that inevitably leads to catastrophe.
- Comedy: Presents conflicts of everyday life with humor and is characterized by a happy resolution.
- Drama: Features a serious action and an unfortunate ending. The characters’ struggles lack a heroic character. Often mixes tense moments with moments of relaxation.
Minor Genres:
- Appetizer
- Farce
- Auto-sacramental
- Vaudeville
- Opera
- Zarzuela
Literary Figures
Phonological and Morphological Figures:
- Alliteration: Repetition of similar sounds.
- Paranomasia: Placement of words with similar sounds but different meanings in close proximity.
- Pun: Grouping the syllables of a word differently to create a different meaning.
- Switching: Two opposing groups of words that contain the same words but in a different order and function.
Syntactic Figures:
- Ellipsis: Omission of one or more elements that are understood from the context.
- Asyndeton: Elimination of conjunctions between two or more elements that would normally have them.
- Polysyndeton: Repetition of conjunctions to connect multiple items.
- Germination: Repetition of a word at the beginning of a verse.
- Epiphora: Repetition of a word at the end of a verse.
- Epistrophe: Repetition of a word at the end of several verses.
- Anaphora: Repetition of a word at the beginning of several verses.
- Anadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the end of one verse and the beginning of the next.
- Reduplication or Epanadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the beginning and end of a verse.
- Polyptoton: Repetition of a lexeme with different inflectional morphemes.
- Derivation: Repetition of a lexeme with different derivative morphemes.
- Enumeration: A series of interrelated elements.
- Graduation: An enumeration that follows a particular order.
- Parallelism: Repetition of structures in two or more lines.
- Chiasmus: Non-symmetrical arrangement of two parallel groups of words.
- Hyperbaton: Alteration of the normal order of words in a sentence.
Figures of Thought:
- Apostrophe: Addressing someone or something directly.
- Rhetorical Question: A question that does not require an answer.
- Dilogy: A word with two meanings.
- Antithesis: Opposition of words with semantically opposite meanings.
- Oxymoron: Combination of two words with opposite meanings.
- Paradox: The union of two incompatible ideas.
- Litotes: Denial of the opposite of what is meant.
- Irony: Presenting an idea using an expression that means the opposite.
- Comparison: Comparing one element to another.
- Hyperbole: Exaggeration.
- Paralipsis: Pretending to ignore what is actually being said.
- Aposiopesis: Interruption of speech.
- Personification: Attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.
- Epiphonema: A brief exclamation summarizing a point previously discussed.
Tropes:
- Metaphor: Substitution of one element for another with which it has a similarity.
- Creative Metaphor: When the similarity established between the elements is disproportionate.
- Synesthesia: Transposition of sensations from one sense to another.
- Allegory: A text that presents a global meaning through a figurative level.
- Metonymy: Substitution of one term for another with which it has a relationship of contiguity.
- Synecdoche: A type of metonymy where an element is replaced by another with which it has a whole-to-part or part-to-whole relationship.
- Hypallage: Attributing to a noun an adjective that actually corresponds to a nearby noun.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages spanned from the 5th to the 15th century. This period was organized according to an economic and political model known as feudalism. Society was divided into three estates: clergy, nobles, and peasants. The first two owned the land, while the peasants worked it and gave a portion of their produce to the lords in exchange for protection. The nobles were responsible for defending their vassals. Social conflicts arose within each estate. The development of trade and craft industry at the end of the Middle Ages led to a crisis in the feudal system in the 12th century. This century saw significant economic growth: cities expanded, and trade routes multiplied.
Burgos (cities) emerged, and the bourgeois inhabitants were descendants of farmers who had settled in the cities. The breakdown of feudalism became evident in the 14th century, a time of general crisis.
Prose
In the second half of the 13th century, Castilian prose emerged and developed. This was due to the efforts of King Alfonso X the Wise, who promoted Castilian as a cultural language instead of Latin. Alfonso X encouraged the translation of numerous Oriental works.
Alfonso X’s works were diverse, including historical, legal, scientific, and entertainment texts. Throughout the 13th century, many collections of stories or exempla of Eastern origin appeared. The morality preached by these Oriental tales was essentially practical, advising caution. The medieval tale was incorporated into the work of Don Juan Manuel with Count Lucanor.
Don Juan Manuel was the nephew of Alfonso X the Wise, and his works reflect the social problems and contradictions of 14th-century feudal society.
Juan Manuel defended the traditional feudal social order and justified his own political actions. Some of his works are lost, but notable ones include Count Lucanor, The Book of the Knight and Squire, and others.
Count Lucanor is divided into five parts. The first contains 50 exempla, the second, third, and fourth consist of a collection of proverbs, and the fifth deals with religious themes.
Theater
Two theatrical forms can be distinguished: religious drama and secular theater.
In religious drama, works are grouped into two cycles: Christmas and the Passion of Christ. The first performances took place inside churches, later moving to outdoor stages.
Secular drama was represented by minstrels in their performances, known as juegos, which included farces mocking and satirizing popular culture. Few medieval theatrical texts in Castilian have survived. Today, we only have 147 verses from the Auto de los Reyes Magos, a work from the late 12th century, representing pre-15th-century medieval theater.