Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/472

* SPANISH LITERATURE. 408 SPANISH LITERATURE. fifteenth century) is full of references to Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, to Merlin, and to the Quest of the Holv Grail. Cliarlemagne and Roland are still named along with the heroes of the Round Table, but they obviously have no longer the same living interest. With the Cahallero Cifar, of the first half of the fourteentli century, we have the first inde- pendent work of fiction in Spain, and this was followed perhaps a generation later by one of the most famous of all modern romances, the Amadls de Go H /a. (See Amadis of Gaul.) This important Spanisli work may lay claim to no small amount of originality : it accepts the elements at the basis of the French courtly romance, Imt it de- velops them in its own way, for. though retaining the traditional service of woman and quest of adventure, it stresses the virtuous qualities of the hero no less than his courtliness, something that the French romances had not done. In the form in which we possess it, the Amadis is due to Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, who completed his redaction of it between 1492 and 1504. By him we are told that he had simply rid its fiist three books of the errors and imperfections introduced into it by earlier redactors and by scribes, that he liorrowed and improved the fourth book, and that he him- self added the whole fifth book, the Sergas de Esplaiutian (or Exploits of Esplanadian), in which he deals with the history of the son of the hero, Amadis. The Amadis was the forerunner of many similar romances which enjoyed enormous vogue in the sixteenth century. In imitation of Boccaccio's Fiammetta, which had been translated about the middle of the fif- teenth century, the tale was now attempted in Spain: noteworthy instances are Rodriguez del Padron's dierco libre de amor and El cdrcel de amor of Diego de San Pedro. Xovelistic and didac- tic in its manner is the Triihajos dc Hercules of Enrique de Villena (1384-1434). One of the most original and entertaining works of the whole pe- riod appeared in 1438; this is a satire on woman- kind by Alfonso JIartinez de Toledo, chaplain to John II. and archpriest of Talavera, entitled De los incios dc las malas nnijcrcs, but also called the Corbaclw. Of decided interest for the study of folk-lore are the Hebrew-Spanish and the alja- ma documents, in which the Jews and the Moors, writing in Spanish, but using their Hebrew and Arabic characters, created a rather considerable literatiire of their own. Many of the documents in question belong to the fifteenth century, and especially the most important of them all. the Poema. de Jose, which gives a Mohannnedan ver- sion of the story of Joseph. The sixteenth eentiuy ushers in the classic age of Spanish letters, that period which extends into the .second half of the seventeenth centiu'y and is generally known as the Golden Age. The influence of Italy and the Renaissance, which had been so strong during the preceding century, persists, but, contrary to what happened in other European lands, it does not tend to bring about any disso- lution of continuity as between the old and the new. The ancient Church remains unaffected and the humanistic pasranism of the Renaissance gets no foothold in Spain. In lyric verse Italian forms prevail, but the subject matter is only par- tially affected by influences from without. A realistic movement, marked by a strict applica- tion of keen powers of observation, guides the de- velopment of the novel, which is perfected by Cer- vantes in the reign of Philip II. The ballad con- tinues to be a favorite form and it contributes to the rise of the drama. The drama, giving fullest expression to the national and religious ideals of the Spaniard, constitutes the greatest glory of the Golden Age. Already, in the fifteenth century, Santillana had imitated the structure of the Italian sonnet, but in this innovation lie had had no followers: it re- mained for the Catalonian Boscan(c.l403-c.l542) to establish Italian ver.se methods in Castilian. A better poet tlian Boscfln is his friend and com- panion in the work of innovation, Garcilaso de la Vega (1.503-3). Petrarch is the chief model of the lyric poet, but so far as content is con- cerned, the love lyric of Petrarch did not dift'er very materially from that already cultivated by the Spaniard: the real innovation was a formal one. jloreover, the older Castilian measures were not cast aside; even those who favored most warmly the use of the imported forms continued to employ the domestic forms. A third leading representative of the movement was Diego Hur- tado de Jlendoza (l'i03-7.5) ; elements of refine- ment still lacking in the art of the three poets mentioned were added by writers such as Fer- nando de Acuna (c.1500-80), Gutierre de Cetina (e.I520-60), and the Portuguese Gre- goria Silvestre (1520-70), In the second half of the sixteenth century the followers of Garcilaso formed two main groups, the school of Seville and the coterie at Salamanca : minor groups were those at Granada and in Valencia and Aragon. The head of the school at Seville was Fernando de Herrera ( 1534-n7 ), who is noted both for the purity of his style and the rich- ness of his diction, best exhibited, perhaps, in his hymns on the battle of Lepanto and on the tragic fate of the Portuguese King, Dom Sebastian. The most important member of the Salaniancan group was the charming poet Luis de Leon (1527-91), whose religious and mystic strains have never ceased to please. Allied to him in spirit are the other mystic poets San .luan de la Cruz (1542- 91) and Malrm de Chaide. The religious lyric may be seen at its best in the Romancero espiri- tual of Valdivielso (died 1636) and in the jRimas sacras of Lope de Vega; its vogue began to de- crease when that of the conceptism of Ledesma and his fellows began to grow. An overstressing of the importance of the formal side of things and an undue straining of the means necessary to the attainment of perfection of style led, in the early years of the seventeenth century, to the adoption of the kind of lyric mannerism which is known in Spain as cultcranismo. and which is paralleled by the JIarinism of Italy, by the Euphuism of England, and by the prfciosite of France. Luis de Gongora (1561- 1627) was the founder of this artificial style, which is therefore often called Gongorism. Its characteristics of bombast, obscurity, and general extravagance are fully exhibited in the so-called l?oledadcs of Gongora. Even con- temporaries of so high an order of talent as Lope de Vega and Francisco Gomez de Quevedo (1580- 1645). who at first opposed the Gongoristic move- ment, later adopted many of its methods. As a poet. Quevedo was most successful in his satires, which are full of the spirit of Juvenal. The lyric