Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during 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 poetic production of the aforementioned Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora reached their zenith. Spanish Baroque literature is a period of writing which begins approximately with the first works of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, and continues into the late 17th century.1681, the date of the death of Calderón de la Barca, is frequently considered to mark the end of this period.
The fundamental characteristics of Spanish Baroque literature are the progressive complexity in 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, 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 Lope de Vega comedies are an example. From the dominant sensual concern in the 16th century, there was an emphasis on moral values and didactics, where two currents converge: Neostoicism and Neoepicureism. El Criticón from Baltasar Gracián is a point of arrival in the baroque reflection on man and the world, the awareness of disappointment, a vital pessimism and a general crisis of values.
The genres are mixed, Luis de Góngora wrote lyrical poetry of the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea that makes virtue of difficulty, with romances and burlesque satirical works, of wide popular diffusion and the two currents are hybridized in the Fábula de Príamo y Tisbe; Quevedo wrote metaphysical and moral poems, while writing about vulgar and popular matters.
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 is part of a period of splendor that receives the generic name of the Spanish Golden Age.
Characteristics of the Baroque The Baroque is characterized by the following features: Pessimism: The Renaissance had been not in its purpose of imposing the harmony and the perfection over the world, as the humanists tried, and neither had made man happier; war and social inequalities continued; misery and calamity were common throughout Europe. An intellectual pessimism became more and more marked, together with a carefree character (of which the period's comedies and rogue narrations - on which the picaresque novels are based) give testimony.
Disappointment: As Renaissance ideals failed and, in the case of Spain, political power continued to ebb, disappointment grew and was manifest in literature which in many cases recalled that of two centuries before, as in the Dance of Death or the Poems on the Death of my Father by Manrique. According to Quevedo, life is formed by "successions of deceased": the new born ones become them, from the diaper to the shroud. In conclusion, nothing temporal has importance, it is necessary only to obtain eternal salvation. Preoccupation about the passage of time. Loss of confidence in the ideals of the Renaissance.
In view of the crisis of the Baroque, Spanish writers reacted in several ways: Escapism: The avoidance of reality, through singing past feats and glories, or through presenting an ideal world in which problems are resolved and order prevails; this is the case of the theater of Lope de Vega and his followers. Others, meanwhile, took refuge in the world of art and mythology, as in the case of Luis de Góngora. Satire: Another group of writers chose to make fun of the reality, like Quevedo, Góngora on some occasions, and in the picaresque novel. Stoicism: Complaints on the vanity of the world, the fleetingness of beauty, life, and fame. The greatest exponent of this was Calderón de la Barca in the autos sacramentales. Moralizing: Criticizing the defects and vices, and proposing models of conduct in line with the political and religious ideology of their time, typified by the narrative and doctrinal prose of Gracián and of Saavedra Fajardo.
Prose Miguel de Cervantes
The narrative of the 17th century opens with the figure of Miguel de Cervantes, who returned to Spain in 1580 after ten years absence.
His first printed work was The Galatea (1585). It is a pastoral novel (see Spanish Renaissance literature) in six books of verse and prose, according to the model of the Diana of Montemayor; although it breaks with the tradition when introducing realistic elements, like the murder of a shepherd, or the agility of certain dialogues.
In 1605 he published The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, with immediate success.
In 1613 the Exemplary novels appeared. They are a collection of twelve short novels that look for an ideal, although this is not always clear.
In 1615, Cervantes published the second part of Don Quixote.
In 1617, a year after Cervantes died, The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda appeared. It draws on the Byzantine and Greek novelists such as Heliodorus (3rd century CE) and his The Ethiopian Story of Theagenes and Chariclea. It relates, in four books, how Periandro and Auristela travel from northern territories of Norway or Finland to Rome to receive Christian marriage. As is typical of this subgenre, throughout the trip they experience a variety of trials, mishaps, and delays: captivity by Barbarians, the jealousy and machinations of rivals. The work takes advantage of resources of the Exemplary Novels - especially the italianizing ones - puzzles, confusions, disguises, etc.
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo wrote towards 1604 his first work of prose fiction : the picaresque novel titled The Life Story of the Sharper called Don Pablos, example of wanderers and mirror of rogues.
Quevedo also wrote satirical, political and moral prose works where a stoic morality predominates, where subjects like the criticism of archetypes of the society of the Baroque, the constant presence of death in the life of man, and Christian fervor whereupon the politics has to conduct itself.
The first of his Dreams dates from 1605: The Dream of the Judgment narrates the resurrection of the dead, who must answer for the manner of their life. It is a social satire against professions or trades: jurists, doctors, butchers...
In 1619 he wrote the Politics of God, government of Christ and tyranny of Satan, a political treatise which expounds a doctrine of good government, or 'mirror of princes', for a righteous king, who should have Jesus Christ for model of conduct. It is a treatise in conformity with Spanish anti-Machiavellism, proposing a politics free of intrigue and unconnected with bad influences.
Towards 1636 Quevedo concluded his last great satirical prose: The hour of everybody and the Fortune with prudence, unpublished until 1650. In it, Jupiter requests Fortune to give for one hour what each individual truly deserves. This makes plain the falsity of appearances, and the hidden truth under the veils of the hypocrisy. Operating by antithesis Quevedo shows doctors who are in fact executioners, the rich as poor but thieving, and a whole gallery of social types, offices and states is presented, all implacably satirized.
Marcus Brutus (1644) arises from glosses or commentaries to the biography that Plutarch wrote on this Latin statesman in his Parallel lives.
Baltasar Gracián
The most important work of the second half of the century is The Criticon (modeled on The Satyricon) (1651–1657) by the Aragonese Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658). With it, the Spanish novel is solved in concepts or abstractions. The idea prevails over the concrete figure. It is a philosophical novel written in form of allegory of the human life.
Gracián cultivated didactic prose in treatises of moral intention and practical purpose, like The Hero (1637), The Politician don Fernando the Catholic (1640) or The Discreet one (1646). In them he creates a full series that exemplifies the exemplary, prudent and sagacious man, and the qualities and virtues that must adorn him.
The Manual oracle and art of prudence is a set of three hundred aphorisms composed to help the reader prevail in the complex world-in-crisis of the 17th century. (An English version of this dense treatise has been sold as a manual of self-help for executives and has obtained a recent publishing success.)
He also wrote a rhetoric of Baroque literature, that starts from the texts to redefine the figures of speech of the time, because they did not relate to the classical models. It is a treaty on the concept, which he defines as "an act of the understanding which expresses the correspondence that is found between the objects". That is to say, a concept is every association between ideas or objects. To their classification and dissection Gracián dedicated his Art of talent, treatise on the witticism (1642), extended and reviewed in the later Witticism and art of talent (1648).
The style of Gracián is dense and polysemous. It is constructed of brief sentences, abundant plays on words, and the ingenious association of concepts.
Gracián's attitude to life is one of disillusionment, based on the decay of Spanish society. The world is seen as a hostile space full of deceit and illusion triumphing over virtue and truth, where Man is a self-interested and malicious being. Many of his books are manuals of behavior that allow the reader to succeed gracefully in spite of the maliciousness of his fellow men. For this, he must be prudent and wise, have knowledge of life and the motivations of others, until the point to behave "to the occasion" and "to play of the" dissimulation.
Gracián is recognized as precursor of existentialism, he also influenced French moralists like La Rochefoucauld, and, in the 19th century, the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
Other writers of prose
Lope de Vega stands out, whose well-known Novels to Marcia Leonarda can be singled out. They are a collection of miscellaneous novels, brief works, of amorous thematic and intricate technique, in which verse and prose are mixed. Charged with erudition, and subject to frequent and tedious digressions, they are set in exotic atmospheres and peopled with colorful characters. But Lope de Vega is primarily known as one of the greatest of Spanish playwrights, and his plays are written in verse. Mateo Alemán (Seville, 1547 - Mexico, 1615) was the author of the picaresque novel Life of the rascal Guzmán de Alfarache, published in 1599. This work established the canon of the genre. It achieved a formidable success in Spain and Europe, and was well known as "the rascal of Alemán". In 1604 the second part of the Guzmán de Alfarache was published in Lisbon. The European success of this work was formidable: it was translated almost immediately into Italian in the Venetian presses of Barezzi in 1606; published in German in Munich in 1615; J. Chapelain translated the two parts of the novel to the French and published them in Paris in 1620; two years later the English version was printed in London by James Mabbe who, in an extraordinary prologue, says of the rascal Guzmán that he was "similar to a ship, that sails on the brink of the shore, and never finishes taking port". Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584–1648), native of Tordesillas (Valladolid), was a very popular novelist, author of The girl of the lies Teresa de Manzanares (1632), Adventures of the Trapaza Bachelor (1637) and The marten of Seville and hook of the bags (1642). They are picaresque works in which novels, poems and some entremés are mixed, as we have already seen in Lope de Vega.