Spanish Renaissance Literature
Italianate Lyric Poetry
Juan Boscan introduced Italian literary trends in Spanish poetry. He and his friend Garcilaso embraced these trends, and the latter is credited with performing the poetic revolution.
Characteristics of Italianate Lyric
Influences on New Poetry
Petrarca: Love for him goes beyond everything, and the woman is an attraction that leads you to paradise.
Baldassare Castiglione: Author of The Courtier (ideal man of the time).
Metric Forms
- Hendecasyllables and seven-syllable verses.
- New stanzas (triplets, sonnets, lyres, etc.).
Key Themes
Nature: Appropriate to the mood of the author.
Mythology: As transposition of feelings.
Topics: Ubi sunt, Ille beatus, Carpe diem, etc.
The Renaissance Novel
It developed during the Renaissance, with the new bourgeois mentality enabling the development of stories, which almost always centered on the love of a pair of unhappy lovers.
Features of the Novel
- Composition is not strictly narrative forms.
- Troubadour poetry.
- The Sermon.
- The Epistle.
The letter was the initial core of the novel.
Books of Chivalry: Amadis of Gaul
A kind of story that extolled the ideals of chivalry and in which appears a gallant hero whose only motive was to defend justice and service to his lady. Works like Amadis of Gaul revitalized the chivalric romances that had begun to be cultivated.
Structure and Argument
Tells the story of Amadis, who was thrown into the river at birth and rescued by a gentleman who raises him. As a young man, he goes in search of his origins and has numerous adventures. Amadis and Oriana fall in love and have a son named Esplandian. The original Amadis consisted of Books I and II; a Book III was added later.
Protagonist
Prototype of an invincible hero, chivalrous and noble.
Style
Elegant and courtly prose. Features:
- Clarity and fullness.
- Romance syntax.
Lazarillo de Tormes
Structure
Novel written in letter form, consisting of a prologue and seven treatises.
Argument
Lázaro writes his story to Your Grace, beginning by telling his story from his humble birth. He is a child with no father and a mother living with a man. One notes the change from the beginning where he emerges as a naive child who can become a rogue. His mode of survival evolves as he changes masters: the blind man, the archpriest, the cleric, the squire, and the priest. Each one pushes him towards evil. Finally, he gets a job as a town crier and marries one of the archpriest’s maids but suffers infidelity. The letter ends with a cynical statement on the state he has achieved, finding happiness in spite of having lost his honor.
Pastoral Novel
Such novels reached their heyday but did not become as popular.
Background
Ideal space called Arcadia, a space without time and without place in which leisure was opposed to the citizen’s business.
Features
Features that characterize the genre are:
- Novel with poetic features.
- The protagonists are false shepherds, always honest in love.
- The scenery is pleasant and peaceful, playing on the topic of the Renaissance locus amoenus.
- There is often the intervention of mythological characters.
- The prose is elegant and has high lyricism.
Byzantine or Adventure Novel
These are novels that tell a succession of adventures which terminate with the happy reunion of the lovers.
The Picaresque Novel
The picaresque novel presents the following characteristics:
- Anti-hero.
- Autobiographical form.
- Open structure.
- Determinism.
- Narrative technique, final justification, satirical character, realism.