Baroque Spanish Literature
The Spanish Baroque literature is a period of literary creation that spans roughly from the initial works of Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, until well into the XVIII. The most characteristic century of Spanish literary baroque is the 17th century, in which prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, or the production poetics of the aforementioned Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Góngora.
The fundamental characteristics of Spanish Baroque literature are the progressive complexity in the formal resources and a theme centered on the concern for the passage of time and the loss of confidence in the Neoplatonic ideals of the Renaissance. Likewise, it is worth noting the variety and diversity in the subjects dealt with, the attention to detail and the desire to attract a wide audience, of which the rise of the new lopesca comedy is an example. From the dominant sensual concern in the XVI century, there is an emphasis on moral values and didactic, where two currents converge: neo-stoicism and neo-epicureism. Gracián's El Criticón represents a point of arrival in the baroque reflection on man and the world, the awareness of disappointment, a vital pessimism (but not without hope) and a general crisis of values.
Genres are mixed, Góngora coexists with lyrical poetry in a sublime style of the Fable of Polifemo y Galatea that makes virtue of difficulty, with romances and burlesque satirical letrillas, of wide popular and the two currents are hybridized in the Fable of Pyramus and Thisbe; Quevedo cultivates the most transcendental metaphysical and moral poems, at the same time that he writes about matters of low and even rude character (Thanks and misfortunes of the eye of the ass).
The Spanish Baroque theater configures a popular scene that has endured as a classic production for future theater. The philosophical dramas of Calderón de la Barca, of which Life is a dream is an outstanding example, represent a zenith in Spanish dramatic production and, like all baroque literature, is part of a period of splendor which receives the generic name of the Golden Age.
Historical context
The Spanish Baroque took place in the midst of the so-called Golden Age of Spanish literature. Spain was governed in that period by three monarchs: Felipe II, Felipe III and Felipe IV, ruling the latter until 1665. Felipe II, son and successor of Carlos V of the Holy Roman Empire and I of Spain, by his abdication, took possession of of the Spanish throne in 1556.
During the century before this, Spain had reached its greatest unity and territorial extension. Through inheritances, conquests, diplomatic agreements or royal marriages, Naples and Sicily came to be subject to the scepter of Carlos V; Flanders, Germany, Hungary and Portugal, apart from the new and rich lands of America. On the contrary, Felipe III and Felipe IV had to lose all the European lands one by one. This caused serious problems, religious, political, internal and international.
The 17th century is very peculiar as far as art is concerned. During this century, the Habsburgs ruled in Spain, with valid or favorites, and in many aspects there is a "medievalization" of Spanish life
Philip III (1598-1621) inherits a great bankrupt empire, but also enmity with England and the Netherlands. The private Duke of Lerma moved the Court to Valladolid in 1600; six years later he returns to Madrid. He signs peace with England in 1604 and a truce with the Netherlands (1609-1621). He expels the Moors from the Peninsula (1609), who generally worked in the fields, which impoverished agriculture and the country commercially.
The Duke of Lerma will be succeeded by the Duke of Uceda. Spain intervenes in the Thirty Years' War. The nobles increase in power, while the economy stagnates and copper coins are introduced instead of gold and silver.
Philip IV grants power to the Count-Duke of Olivares, who tries to maintain Spanish supremacy against France in the war that began in 1635, and dominance in the Netherlands.
Fiscal pressure and general political discontent provoked the uprising of Portugal (which managed to become independent from the Spanish Monarchy), Catalonia, Aragon, Navarra and Andalusia. The Buen Retiro Palace is inaugurated, where numerous palace parties will be held.
The count-duke was replaced by Luis de Haro; A nun, Sister María de Jesús de Ágreda, adviser to the king, influenced his dismissal. In 1648 Spain signed the Treaty of Westphalia, by which it lost territories in the Netherlands and the Netherlands achieved its independence.
In 1659 he ended the war with France in the Peace of the Pyrenees. Poverty, epidemics and high taxes cause an alarming decline in the population and migration from the countryside to the city; many areas are depopulated, which harms the national economy.
Charles II (1665-1700) is the last of the Habsburg Minor. He inherited the throne at the age of four, so his mother Mariana of Austria runs it, helped by a board of notables.
He was a weak and sickly king, earning him the nickname Bewitched. He did not leave offspring to either of his two wives, which favored the European monarchs feeling attracted to the Spanish territory and wanted to share it out, even before his death.
The continuous wars with France show even more the decline of Spain before the power of that nation. With Carlos II without descendants, he named Felipe de Anjou, the future Felipe V, grandson of the French Louis XIV, as his heir, which gave rise to the War of the Spanish Succession.
Characteristics of the Baroque
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The Baroque is characterized by the following:
- Pessimism: The Renaissance did not achieve its purpose of imposing harmony and perfection in the world, as humanists intended, nor did it make man happier; wars and social inequalities remained present; pain and calamities were common throughout Europe. An increasingly accentuated intellectual pessimism is installed, coupled with the unraveled character of the comedy of that time and the troublings on which the picaresque novels are based.
- Feeling of vertigo for the immensity of the cosmos, without limit and without center. Man is no longer the center of the universe and therefore the notion bears the Hominem te esse cogita ("think that you are human"), the claim against human pride. Thus, there is a loss of confidence in the Renaissance ideals and in the faith of the unlimited abilities of the human being.
- Disengagement: As the Renaissance ideals failed and, in the case of Spain, the political power was fading, the disappointment continues and arises in the literature, which in many cases recalls that of two centuries before, with the Dance of Death or Coplas at the death of his father Manrique. Quevedo says that life is made up of "successes of the dead": in them the born become, from the diapers to the mortaja with which the exempt bodies are covered. It is understood as an awareness of the human condition that is uncertain and immutable. In conclusion, nothing is important, only eternal salvation must be achieved.
- Concern over the passing of time (Tempus fugit) because it quickly leads to death and forgetfulness (Ubi sunt?).
- Return to neoplatonism: the imperfection of human senses and the deception of empirical reality renders knowledge impossible, for there is no access to the essence of things. Knowledge is a labyrinth paradox, for language deceives, but at the same time it is the only way of knowledge.
Attitude of the writers
In the face of the baroque crisis, Spanish writers reacted in various ways:
- Evading: They try to dissent reality, and they do it by chanting feats or old glories of the past, or they present an ideal world in which problems are properly solved and order triumphs. This is the case of the Lope de Vega theater and its followers. Others, however, prefer to take refuge in the world of art and mythology, as is the case of Góngora.
- Removing reality: Another group of writers chooses to mock reality, such as Quevedo, Góngora on some occasions and the picaresque novel.
- With stoicism: They expose their complaint about the vanity of the world, the escape of beauty and life, the transient fame. The highest exponent of this attitude was Calderón de la Barca in the sacramental cars.
- Moralizing: They criticize defects or vices by proposing models of conduct in accordance with the political and religious ideology of their time. Its main exponents are the narrative and doctrinal prose of Gracián and Saavedra Fajardo.
17th century prose
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Miguel de Cervantes
The 17th century narrative opens with the figure of Miguel de Cervantes, who returned to Spain in 1580 after an absence of ten years.
His first printed work was La Galatea, (Alcalá de Henares, 1585). It is a pastoral novel (see what was said about it in the Renaissance) in six books of verse and prose, based on the model of Diana de Montemayor; although it breaks with tradition by introducing realistic elements, such as the murder of a shepherd, or the agility of certain dialogues.
In 1605 he published The ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, with immediate success.
In 1613 the Exemplary Novels appeared, a collection of twelve short novels that seek to be exemplary, although this is not always clear.
The next Cervantine prose was The ingenious knight Don Quixote de la Mancha (1615), the second part of Don Quixote.
In 1617, one year after Cervantes' death, The works of Persiles and Sigismunda appear. It is a Byzantine novel or Greek novel, in imitation of Heliodorus (3rd century AD) and his Ethiopian History of Theagenes and Chariclea, which recounts, in four books, how Periander and Auristela they travel from the northern lands of Norway or Finland to Rome to receive Christian marriage. As is typical of this subgenre, throughout the journey they will suffer incidents or hardships: captivity between barbarians, the jealousy of the suitors of both lovers... The work takes advantage of resources from Exemplary Novels, especially from the italianizantes, like the entanglement, the confusions, disguises, etc.
Quevedo's prose
Francisco de Quevedo wrote his first prose work of fiction around 1604: the picaresque novel entitled Historia de la vida del Buscón called don Pablos; an example of vagabonds and a mirror of tightwads.
In addition, Quevedo cultivated satirical, political and moral prose in works in which a stoic morality dominates, with Senequist roots and deals with issues such as the criticism of archetypes of baroque society, the constant presence of death in the life of the man and the Christian zeal with which politics must be conducted
The first of his Dreams dates from 1605: The Dream of Judgment narrates the resurrection of the dead, who answer for their lives. It is a satire against professions or social states: lawyers, doctors, butchers...
In 1619 he wrote the Politics of God, government of Christ and tyranny of Satan, a political treatise in which he set out a doctrine of good government or mirror of princes for a just king, who should have as role model to Jesus Christ. It is a treatise that fits in the line of Spanish anti-Machiavellianism, and proposes a policy free of intrigue and alien to bad influences.
Around 1636 Quevedo concluded his last great satirical prose, perhaps dating from 1632: Everyone's hour and Fortune with brains, unpublished until 1650. In it, Jupiter asks Fortune to award for a Give each one what they truly deserve. This leads to see false appearances, the other side of reality and the truth hidden behind the veils of hypocrisy, operating by antithesis. This gives rise to the paradox that doctors are actually executioners, the rich, poor but thieves, and, ultimately, a gallery of social types, trades and states is witnessed that is relentlessly satirized.
The Marco Brutus (1644) arises from glosses or comments on the biography that Plutarch wrote about this Latin statesman in his Parallel Lives.
Other baroque prose writers
Lope de Vega, of which we will highlight the ones known as Novels to Marcia Leonarda (collection of miscellaneous novels, short works, with love themes and tangled techniques, that mix verse and prose, exotic environments — Moriscos, Jews, etc.—, with ornate erudition and frequent and lengthy digressions).
Mateo Alemán (Seville, 1547-Mexico, ¿1615?), author of the picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache, whose first part was published in 1599, this work established the canon of the genre, reached a formidable success in Spain and Europe, and was known par excellence as El pícaro de Alemán, published in Lisbon in 1604, and the second part of this work. The European success of his work was formidable; it was almost immediately translated into Italian on Barezzi's Venetian presses in 1606; in German it was published in Munich in 1615; J. Chapelain translated the two parts of the novel into French and published them in Paris in 1620; Two years later, the English version of James Mabbe was printed in London, who, in an extraordinary prologue, says of the rogue Guzmán that he was "similar to a ship, which goes round and round on the shore, and never finishes making port."
Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584-before 1648), born in Tordesillas (Valladolid), was a very popular novelist, author of The Liar Girl Teresa de Manzanares (1632), Adventures of the Bachelor Trapaza (1637) and The marten of Seville and the hook of the bags (1642). Picaresque works in which novels, poems and some hors d'oeuvres are mixed, as we have already seen in Lope de Vega.
It is not without reason that María de Zayas y Sotomayor (1590-1661) from Madrid is considered the second novelist of the century, after Cervantes. In 1637 hers Loving and Exemplary Novels appeared, a collection of ten stories in which the erotic theme creates conflicting and surprising situations.
A follower of Francisco de Quevedo and a Sevillian was Luis Vélez de Guevara (1579-1644), author of El diablo cojuelo (1641), a social satire accompanied by allegorical figures.
The middle of the century closes with the Life and facts of Estebanillo González, a man of good humor (Antwerp, 1646). He narrates his life (1608-1646) as a servant of many masters and a soldier on various occasions. He presents picaresque features: scams, fights, deceit, drunkenness, robbery and prostitution.
Philosophical prose shines with Luis de Molina (1535-1600), an enlightened man established in Rome. His doctrine, nicknamed Molinoism, had a great impact and influence on Baroque thinkers and writers after him. His thought mixes the principles of religion with an elaborate moral philosophy.
Baltasar Gracian
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The most important work of the second half of the century is El Criticón (1651-1657) by the Aragonese Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658). With it, the Spanish novel is resolved into concepts or abstractions. The idea prevails over the concrete figure. It is a philosophical novel written in the form of an allegory of human life.
Gracián cultivated didactic prose in treatises with moral intent and practical purpose, such as El Héroe (1637), El Político don Fernando el Católico (1640) or The Discreet (1646). In them he creates a whole series that exemplifies the exemplary, prudent and shrewd man, and the qualities and virtues that should adorn him.
The Oracle manual and art of prudence is a set of three hundred aphorisms to succeed in the complex world in crisis of the century XVII. It has achieved recent publishing success, selling an English version of this dense little treatise in more than 150,000 copies as a self-help manual for executives.
He also wrote a rhetoric of baroque literature, which started from the texts to reconsider the tropes of the time, as they no longer conformed to well-known models. It is a treatise on the concept, which he defines as "an act of understanding that expresses the correspondence found between objects." That is, concept is any association between ideas or objects. Gracián dedicates his Art of Wit, Treatise on Sharpness (1642), expanded and revised in the subsequent Sharpness and Art of Wit (1648) to his classification and dissection..
Gracian's style is dense and polysemic. It is built from short sentences, which contain abundant puns and ingenious associations of concepts.
His attitude towards life is disappointed, as befits the decadence of Spanish society. The world is configured as a hostile space and full of deceit and appearances, which prevail over virtue and truth. Man is an interested and malicious being. Many of his books are behavior manuals that allow the reader to succeed despite the malice of his peers. To do this, he must be prudent and wise, learn from life experience and know the intentions of others, to the point of behaving "on the occasion" and "playing" disguise.
Gracian is recognized as a precursor of existentialism. He also influenced French moralists, such as La Rochefoucauld, and in the XIX century in the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
The theater
The theatrical performances of this time took place in open spaces, squares or fixed corrals: the corrales de comedias. They started around two in the afternoon and lasted until nightfall. There were usually no seats and the spectators remained standing throughout the performance. The nobility occupied the balconies and windows of the houses that surrounded the square or overlooked the courtyard, and the ladies attended the show with their faces covered with masks or behind latticework. The show began with the guitar performance of a popular piece; songs were sung immediately accompanied by various instruments. Then came the loa, a kind of explanation of the merits of the work and a synthesis of its argument. The comedy or main work began, and in the intermissions dances or hors d'oeuvres were performed.
The stage was a simple stage and the decoration was a curtain. Scene changes were announced by one of the actors.
The poet wrote the comedy, well paid by the author —current director— to whom he ceded all rights to the work performed or printed to modify the text. The works lasted three or four days, or (with exceptions) fifteen for a successful comedy.
Juan de la Cueva, in the second half of the XVI century, introduces two elements of great importance for the rise of this artistic production: popular ethics, which gave rise to comedies of a national historical nature, and the freedom to compose dramatic works taking into account the taste of the public. Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina brought these characteristics to their full realization.
At the end of the XVI century Lope de Vega created the national comedy: an action with a love theme is superimposed on another historical one or legendary, Moorish, captive, or religious. It ended with a happy ending. Built over three days, the redondilla or the tenth are used in dialogues, the romance in narratives, the sonnet in monologues and the triplet in serious situations.
From 1609 is the New Art of Making Comedies, a jocular defense of his theater. He shows contempt for the rigid interpretation that the preceptors -especially Italians- of the Renaissance had made of Aristotelian ideas about theater and proposes as values naturalness over artifice, variety over units and taking into consideration the taste of the audience. public.
Among his prolific dramatic production, the following stand out: Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña (1604-12) is a tragicomedy set in 1406, in Toledo: Peribáñez understands that the Commander of Ocaña has showered him with honors to harass his wife. After killing him he earns a royal pardon.
Around 1614 Lope would compose one of his best tragicomedies: Fuenteovejuna. Following the Crónica de las tres ordenes... (Toledo, 1572) by Francisco de Rades, it shows the abuses of Commander Fernán Gómez de Guzmán on the residents of Fuenteovejuna and on Laurencia, recently married to Frondoso. The assassination of the Commander by the people and the forgiveness of the Catholic Monarchs in the face of the evidence round off his action. A popular uprising against the abuse of power is seen in it, but it only reflects a specific injustice and underlines the submission to the king.
The best mayor, the King returns to peasant dignity: Don Tello, an arrogant nobleman, abuses Elvira, fiancée of peasant Sancho. Alfonso VII restores her honor, marrying her to Don Tello, whom he executes, to marry the already noble widow, Sancho.
The Knight of Olmedo (ca. 1620-25), a tragedy with celestine roots, based on a popular song: Don Alonso dies at the hands of Don Rodrigo, jealous of losing Doña Inés.
Guillén de Castro was a Spanish playwright, considered the most important of the late XVI century and one of the most hallmarks of the new lopesca comedy, developed from the irruption in the theater of Lope de Vega. His works, especially Las mocedades del Cid , influenced other later French playwrights.
Tirso de Molina's dramaturgy, like Lope's, has numerous swashbuckling comedies. An ingenious argument is given in Don Gil of the green leggings, which deals with the motif of the woman dressed as a man and the misunderstandings to which it gives rise. Within these sitcoms there is another subgenre, that of palatal or "factory" comedies (as Bances Candamo called them), of which The Shameful in the Palace has been considered the model of all those that were written later in which the characters are of high social status. However, Tirso also excelled in comedies about serious matters, such as those about saints: La dama del olivar and, above all, El condenado por distrusto. He has traditionally been credited with creating the myth of Don Juan in El burlador de Sevilla in which a distinguished nobleman upsets the social order by dishonoring women and is punished by the funerary statue of one of his victims, father of one of the mocked ladies, who kills him and drags him to hell. His theater also stands out for the psychological depth with which he characterizes the female characters, who became protagonists of his works.
It is worth noting the importance of other high-class playwrights, such as Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. They are his masterpieces, The Suspicious Truth , which inspired Le menteur by Pierre Corneille and The Liar by Goldoni, and The walls hear . The Examination of Husbands is similar to The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, because both are inspired by a common Italian source.
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The other great playwright of the 17th century was Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). His most famous work is Life is a Dream (1635), a philosophical drama that presents Sigismund, son of the King of Poland, chained in a tower, due to the fateful forecasts of royal astrologers. Meanwhile, Rosaura claims in her Court her honor stolen by Duke Astolfo. He woos Estrella to be king. Segismundo's aggressiveness explodes when he is freed from his tower, where he returns, chained, believing he had dreamed of his experience of freedom. When a riot rescues him again, his will trumps the predictions: he masters his condition, marries Rosaura to Astolfo, and accepts Estrella's hand in hand. The order is established. The drama ends with the expected ending for an audience with a baroque mentality and culture.
The most well-given stick could have been released in 1636 or 37. It was printed in 1651. Since 1683 it has received the title of The Mayor of Zalamea. It presents the rape of Isabel, daughter of Pedro Crespo, by Captain Álvaro de Ataide. Named mayor Pedro Crespo, he executed him. The king listens to his defense and agrees with him. This costumbrista or honor drama follows the very lopesco theme of the villain's honor.
In addition to these works, Pedro Calderón de la Barca has contributed to Spanish literature with a large number of sacramental plays, among which The Great Theater of the World stands out.
Following Calderón's style, a group of playwrights continued to write in the second half of the century. They were characterized by greater rigor in the dramatic construction than the playwrights of the lopesca school, by an effort to simplify the plots and the number of characters, and by the care observed in poetic decorum. Many of his plays recast and improve those of Lope and his dramatic school. In the style, the assimilation of the resources of culteranismo is noticed, mainly through the use that Calderón made of them for the theater. In general, they sought to deepen intellectual or moral reflection in their production, which often posed moral dilemmas, rather than confronting characters. They wrote many plays for the court theaters, which also influenced those performed in the comedy theaters.
The most outstanding authors of Calderón's school were Agustín Moreto, with precise comedies and great structural balance such as El desdén con el desdén or El lindo don Diego, and Francisco Rojas Zorrilla, author of ingenious comedies such as Among bobos anda el juego and dramas of great depth, such as None of the king below or Everyone what they have . Other members of this dramatic current are Cubillo de Aragón (Marcela's dolls), Matos Fragoso (Her mother's husband), Antonio de Solís (Triumphs of love and fortune), Antonio Coello (The Count of Sex), Juan Bautista Diamante (His father's honorable man) and Bances Candamo (For his king and his lady), who wrote in the last years of the XVII century and theorized about theater Spanish Baroque in his important work of literary criticism Theater of theaters of past and present centuries.