CHARACTERISTICS of the Spanish Golden Age in LITERATURE

The Golden Age in Spain It is considered one of the most brilliant centuries in the country's history, both culturally, artistically and politically. In this century the Discovery of America took place, but important voices such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega or Calderón de la Barca.

In a PROFESSOR we are going to analyze the main characteristics of the Spanish Golden Age, a period whose beginning is usually located in 1492 and which ends with the death of Calderón, in the seventeenth century. Calderón de la Barca is considered the last great writer of the Golden Age and he died in 1681, the year in which the end of this brilliant period is usually set.

When we speak of the Golden Age, we speak of a very long time that involved advances in many fields: the arts, science and politics. In this lesson we are going to focus on the literary field, since this period appeared some of the most important feathers in literary history Spanish and works that today are consecrated: Don Quixote by Cervantes or Life is a dream of Calderón.

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To better understand what happened in the literature of this time, here we leave you a review of the main characteristics of the Spanish Golden Age, take note!

Two aesthetic currents

We have already commented that this period spanned many years and, therefore, the Golden Age is usually divided taking into account the 2 artistic currents that were followed in each stage:

Spanish renaissance. It is the predominant aesthetic in the first part of the Golden Age and is characterized by a return to the classics.
Baroque literature. The Baroque was a current that began in the seventeenth century and is characterized by an overloaded art, by an aesthetic exaggeration and by a metaphorical, poetic and complex theater.

Therefore, when we talk about the Golden Age we are not talking about a type of aesthetics or style, but we are referring to a period of time of splendor in Spanish society and the arts.

Theater development

If we talk about the characteristics of the Golden Age, we must mention the heyday that the theater had at this time. The Golden Age theater had an essential figure for this literary genre: Lope de Vega. This author opted to renew the foundations of the theater and to create a type of literary art closer to the people that would be represented in popular spaces known as comedy pens, the first theaters in Spain. In the 17th century, the first Italian-influenced theater buildings and operas began to be built.

With The New Art of Making Comedies, Lope opted for the tragicomedy, for the freedom of the themes, for breaking with the rule of the 3 units of Aristotle and for the use of a language adapted to the characters of the work.

The theater was so important at this time that it is considered that this, together with the Elizabethan theater that was created in England, settled the bases for creating modern theater. In addition, in Spain a dramatic subgenre which had a great heyday: the zarzuelas.

Emergence of the modern novel

Another characteristic of the Golden Age is that this was the time when one of the most acclaimed novels of all time appeared:Don Quixote by Cervantes. It is considered as the first modern novel history and, therefore, one of the most important literary works of world literature. In addition, it is also the first novel in which different narrative voices were included, that is, polyphony, a resource that allowed the author offer different points of view and thus show all the realities enclosed in the same reality, a more subjective and personal reading of the world.

Innovations in poetry

Of course, in the literature of the Golden Age there were also authors who bet on creating a new and very particular poetry. In this sense, we must indicate that in this period poetic forms such as the sonnet, the royal octave and the triplet were explored; They also opted for a thematic opening and new themes were incorporated, such as myths, for example. In poetry a new current appeared, The mystic, in which the verses were used for religious purposes.

Characteristics of the Spanish Golden Age - What are the characteristics of the Golden Age in literature?

Now that you know the characteristics of the Golden Age, we are going to discover another important concept and it is precisely the etymology of this period in the history of Spain. Why is it called Siglo de Oro? This name was coined years later from the hand of Luis José Velázquez, a scholar and writer who thus baptized this period in his publication Origins of Castilian poetry.

The reason for this name is clear: it was at this time that we can count on such prominent authors as Lope de Vega, Cervantes or Calderón. Furthermore, as we have seen in the previous sections, it was a time of maximum cultural and artistic splendor that promoted the renewal of the arts, not only in Spain, but throughout the world. Let us remember that we came from a Middle Ages that, in Spain, is known as the Dark Ages due to the presence of the Inquisition and the lack of high-quality literary works.

In the Golden Age it was promoted by artistic renewal and the modern theater and the modern novel were created; in addition, new genres were also created such as zarzuela or mystical poetry.

Origin of the Golden Age

Although it is not easy to place this period in Spanish history chronologically, the truth is that experts usually place the origin of the Golden Age in 1492, the year in which the Muslims were expelled from the Peninsula and the year in which Columbus arrived in the Americas.

We finish this review of the characteristics of the Golden Age to talk about the great historical importance that this period had in Spanish letters. Although it was a moment of political and cultural splendor, the truth is that the field of letters was the one that shone the most during the 16th and 17th centuries. And it is in this century that a large number of literary genres and aesthetic changes were developed that laid the foundations for the new Spanish literature.

Precisely from the Golden Age is one of the top works of literature: Don Quijote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. But, in addition, at this time other great writers also flourished such as: