Spanish Literature: Ballads and La Celestina
Spanish Ballads: Forms, Themes, and Style
The ballad encompasses a wide range of compositions, including romances, epic poems, and lyrical or epic-lyric poems. These typically feature an undetermined number of eight-syllable lines with assonant rhyme in pairs. Traditional forms and themes have been collected and transmitted orally from generation to generation.
Types of Ballads
- Old Ballads: Anonymous works dating from an unknown source to the mid-sixteenth century.
- New Ballads: Texts written since the
Baroque Literature in 17th Century Spain: Styles & Key Authors
Baroque Literature in 17th Century Spain
The Baroque: Thought and Literature
Baroque Mentality
Baroque mentality is characterized by a sense of skepticism and pessimism, considered critical due to the political, economic, and social development of Spain. This is reflected in the following points:
- Disillusionment with the World: The beauty of reality is a mere appearance, deceit, and lies. Only the ugliness of man’s life is misery, full of sorrow and weakness. A negative view of everything human.
- Fear
Understanding the Epic: A Deep Dive into Poetic Form
Epic Poetry: Form, Evolution, and Historical Context
An epic is a poetic genre consisting of six verses, composed of six feet, either spondees (/ _ _ /) or dactyls (/ _ uu /). These verses recount heroic deeds, both human and divine.
Content Characteristics
Epic poetry encompasses a wide range of themes, often with a broad scope. There is a tension between historical and mythological themes, the latter typically being more prominent. Additionally, there is a tension between the unity of the narrative
Read MoreRomanticism in Spain: Literature, Theater, Prose, and Poetry
Romanticism: A Literary Movement
Romanticism was a literary movement whose heyday was in Europe during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It is characterized by its delivery to the imagination and subjectivity, freedom of thought and expression, and its idealization of nature. Its features are:
- Individualism and subjectivism
- Search for originality and the distinctive features of nations
- Protection of freedom from all points of view of art, which leads to an attitude of rebellion against any
Avant-Garde Movements and the Spanish Generation of ’27
Avant-Garde Movements of the Early 20th Century
Futurism: Celebrated the myths and stereotypes of modernity, such as speed, machines, and strength. Futurists glorified war and advocated for the destruction of museums, libraries, and everything related to the traditional concept of art. It was especially important in Italy, and its founder, Marinetti, was closely aligned with fascism.
Expressionism: A German-born movement that deformed the visible world to transmit a tragic awareness of life. It expressed
Read MoreBritish Literature in the 1930s: A Decade of Change
By mid-decade, this posture had led to the justification of Auden’s murder in the poem “Spain” (Spain, 1937): “The conscious acceptance of guilt in the fact of murder” (now believe in the necessity of conscious murder). In January 1937, Auden went to Spain, but upon returning from the theater, his fascination with radical ideology came to an end. The first encounter with real violence from both warring sides (a similar theme sounds in E. Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls) marked a philosophical
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