Spanish Renaissance Literature: Styles, Authors, and Works
Spanish Renaissance Literature
San Juan de la Cruz
Poetic Work
This includes minor art poems and three major poems: Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Song, and Flame of Love Alive. These three are written in older liras.
- Poems reflect the mystical experience, the union of the soul with God, and symbolic language based on human love.
- Dark Night and Spiritual Song share the same pattern: the beloved (the soul) goes in search of his beloved (God), and the spiritual marriage takes place.
- Flame of Love Alive celebrates the mystical union.
Prose Work
Mystical treatises that discuss the major poems: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night, Spiritual Canticle, and Flame of Love Alive.
Fray Luis de León
Poetic Work
Includes 23 original poems, imitations, and translations of Latin poems.
- Odes
- Themes and Topics: Desire for inner peace and communion with God, virtuous life of beatus ille, tags, vivere secum, and locus amoenus.
- Early Influences: Neoplatonism and Stoicism.
- Titles: Ode to the Retired Life, The Apartment, The Air Serena
Prose Work
Exposition of the Song of Songs, The Perfect Wife, The Names of Christ.
Garcilaso de la Vega
Poetic Work
Forty sonnets, three Eclogues, five songs, two elegies, and an epistle.
- Topics: Love, nature (locus amoenus), carpe diem, and mythology.
- Poetic Evolution: From early poems influenced by lirica cancionero to full assimilation of the Petrarchan and the influence of classical literature.
- Style: Naturalness, simplicity, importance of epithets, and metaphors related to nature.
Renaissance Lyric
Influenced by classical literature and Italian Renaissance poetry, particularly Petrarch.
Formal Traits
- Metric Innovations: The endecasilavo is imported from Italy, along with other types of verses and poems.
- Stylistic Aspects: Adjectives, especially epithets, metaphors based on elements of nature, and Latinisms; hyperbaton.
Themes and Motifs
The main themes are love and yasocidos. Other themes include the description of the beloved, locus amoenus, carpe diem, and mythology. In the second half of the century, religious and moral poetry gained importance.
Stages
- 1st: First half of the century: cacioneril poetry in the first decades, followed by Petrarchan poetry (Garcilaso).
- 2nd: Second half-century: Mystical, religious, and moral poetry (Fray Luis and San Juan), EPIA, and Petrarchan poetry.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance, a cultural movement that emerged in Italy in the fourteenth century, promoted a change in the conception of man, who became the center of the world. The basis of this transformation was humanism, a thought based on humanistic studies that imposed classical learning. This Latin formation allowed the development of man’s reading capabilities. The influence of ancient writers in poetic creation led to their imitation, defined as knowledge of various texts, both personal and public. Nature, recreation, and pleasure were exalted, and an optimistic outlook dominated. The ideal of the courtier appeared: soldier and poet (Garcilaso). In Spain, it developed from the late fifteenth century, highlighting the work of Cardinal Cisneros and the study of the Spanish language, with figures like Nebrija and Juan de Valdes.
Renaissance Models (Epic)
Byzantine History
- Story: Separation of two young lovers, travels with hardships, and final reunion.
- Discourse: Beginning in medias res, interpolation of stories.
- Titles: The Story of Thinning and Florisea.
Pastoralism
- Story: Idealized shepherds travel through a pastoral setting, narrating their woes.
- Discourse: Beginning in medias res, interpolation of stories, poems, letters, and dialogues.
- Titles: The Target.
Other Models
- Celestina Novel: The Lush Andalusian.
- Sentimental Novel, Novel of Chivalry, Moorish Novel: The Beautiful Jarifa.
Lazarillo de Tormes
An anonymous picaresque novel, a pseudo-autobiographical story, with a miserable protagonist of picaresque origin and character, and a final explanation of dishonor.
- Sources: The Golden Ass by Apuleius; adaptation of the bucket; process of love letters; folkloric stories.
- Story Levels: Abandonment of the family and service to various masters.
- First Module: Childhood (blind man, clergyman, squire); hunger.
- Second Module: Adolescence (monk, pardoner, master of painting, tambourines); deceit, falsehood.
- Third Module: Youth (chaplain, bailiff, archpriest); settlement, marriage, world without love, urban space.
- Discourse: Structured as a letter by its protagonist. It is addressed to “your worship” and begins with his childhood adventures to explain and justify his adult personality. The story time has many mismatches; the beginning of his life is told very fast, while other times it is longer. There are universal discourses and speeches.
- Evaluative Resources: Use of humor, diminutives, and antithesis.
- Themes: Honor and religion.
Don Quixote
Edition
Part 1: 1605, with the title The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote. It consists of prefaces, poems, burlesques, and 52 chapters in four parts.
- Sources: Besides narrative models, an anonymous sixteenth-century work.
- Prologue: Cervantes parodies the romance of chivalry to criticize this genre, which becomes an essential ingredient of the book.
- Structure:
- Main action: Three starts (1st and 2nd in the first half, 3rd in the second).
- Narrative scheme: Departure from the village, adventures, and return to the village.
- Interpolated stories: Formal variety and styles of the previous narrative.
- Characters:
- Don Quixote: Hidalgo, cultured, lonely, brave, and imposing. His madness is feigned; he is sane and wise.
- Sancho: Poor peasant, uneducated, prudent, practical, and peaceful. Friendship and loyalty to Don Quixote.
- Dulcinea: Invention of Don Quixote from a village girl.
- Topics and Meanings: Idealism, freedom, love, madness, literature. Different interpretations: comic play, idealistic novel, and realistic character perspectivism.
- Narrators: Main narrator (omniscient), fictitious authors, and character narrators.
- Languages: Chivalric and archaic language, oratorical style of Don Quixote, popular speech with inaccuracies and sayings in the dialogues. There are also Sancho’s monologues, documents, letters, and poems.