Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/473

* SPANISH LITERATUBE. 409 SPANISH LTTEBATURE. poets of tlie seventeenth ccnturv were lofjioii: :[ira de Amescua, Esteban Manuel dc Villegas ( 1596- l(iG!l), Jacinto Polo tie Meilina. FianeiMO de Bor- ja, Principe de Esquilaclie ( 15.S1-10S8), and the dramatist Calderon were but a few of them. With the facilities now provided by the printing press, it became possible to make extensive collec- tions of the ballads (loniiiitccs) . which, previous to the end of the fifteenth century, seem to have survived only through oral tradition. There appeared durinsi the f:ifilo dc oro more than two hundred poems belonging to the category of the artificial epic. Of these the most important deal with subjects appertaining to th» national history; many treat religious matters, and many others are of the class of the chivalrous epic. They are mainly written in octaves, only occa- sionally in blank verse {versos siwUos). Chief among the epics of an historical character is the Araiicano of Alfonso de Ercilla (1,533-94), writ- ten by a soldier who here gives the results of his experience in the wars of the ^Spaniards with the Araucanian Indians. The historical value is still of a high degree in the Elrfi'uis de i-nroncs iliistrcs de las Indlas (first part printed 1589) of -Tuan de Castellanos, and the Argentina of Centenera. The imagination plays a larger part than the historical fact in the Aus- triada of Juan Rufo ( 1547-c.lOOn). In the period of greatest dramatic productivity the historical epic gradually- wanes in importance; the Xupoles reciipernda of Francisco de Borja (1051) is one of the last. A place apart is oc- cupied by the A»h«)I?cs rfe Tecuci (1616) of Salas, which the author pretended to be an historical account of the tragic fate of the famous lovers. The Vergilian epic was made known to many by the Eneidn of Hernandez de Velasco (1557); after the appearance of Boscan's Fiihnln de Lean- dro If Hero, mythological episodes from classic antiquity were made the theiue of poems by Hurtado de Mendoza. Lope de Vega. Jlontcmayor, Gongora, etc. The Italian epic of the Cinquecento was transplanted to Spain, and was made the subject, not only of verse translations, but also of amplifications and continuations, some of these latter dealing with Spanish history or legend. A religious epic deserving of note is Azevedo's Creadon del mundo (1615), being remarkable in that, imitating the f^emnine of Dubartas. it shows a resumption of literary relations with France. The mock heroic of Oreece and Italy finds an echo in Juan de la Cueva's Btitnlla de rnnas y ratones. Villaviciosa's ilosqncn (1615). and Lope de Vega's Gafomaquia. The tendency to fill Spanish prose with Latin- isms, so strong in the preceding period, now yields to a feeling which finds a native dignity in the mother tongue. .Juan de Vald^^s. in his Didloqo de la lengua (c.1535). initiated the scientific study of the grammatical and stylistic peculiarities of Castilian. Comparntive perfec- tion of form is attained in ^Mariana's fjistnria de, Espai'ia (1601. etc.). the first thoroighly good account of Castilian history based on the study of documents. In his Ariiide^a i/ arte de inrfcnio, Baltasar Gracian (c.1601-58) gave the law- book of that system of literary mannerisms termed conceptism : he also got the attention of contemporaries and posterity by his aphoristic and sententious sayings of various kinds. Re- ligious literature of a mystic and ascetic nature nnist occupy an important place in the annals of the time; it is best represented by the writings of Luis de Leon.. San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross), MaU'm de Chaide, Luis de Granada, and Santa Teresa de Jesfis (Saint Theresa, 1505-82). Preceding the period of activity of Cervantes, we have the continuation of the chivalric novel; the pastoral novel; the narrative form as ex- hibited in the Celcslina ; and the earliest of the picaresque novels. Of the posterity of the Amadis, the imsurpassable type of the romance of chivalry, are a number of continuations deal- ing with the adventures of Florisando, Lisuarte of Greece, Perion of Wales, Amadis of Greece, and similar heroes. Hardly less a favorite than the Amadis was an imitation of it entitled Pal- nierin de Olini (1511). which in its turn was nuide the subject of otlier continuations and imi- tations. The bonks of chivalry prepared the way for the pastoral romance, introduced into Span- ish by Jorge de Montemayor (e.1515-61), who founded his Diana on the Arcadia of the Italian Sannazaro. For contemporaries a good deal of the interest in the Diana and its kindred depend- ed upon the personal allusions conveyed by the characters and in the dialogue. The Trnfiicomedia de Calisto ;/ Melibca (later termed the Celestina) was published at Burgos in 1409. and appeared in an amplified form at Salamanca in 1500. Al- though it is called a tragicomedy, it cannot in its present form have ever been capable of scenic representation, and it is certainly more a novel than a play. On account of its spirited action and of the development which the Celestina gave to the handling of dialogue and the delineation of character, it exerted an influence upon later dramatists and novelists both. It soon provoked continuations and imitations, and a connection may even be traced out between it and the Dorotea of Lope de Vega. The realistic ten- dencies evinced in the Celestina are equally pro- nounced in the first of the picaresque novels, the anonymous La::nrillo de Tormcs (1554). long ascribed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. In this novel we follow the career of a rogue (p'caro), who. beginning as the guide (la^arillo) of a blind beggar, deceives him. and. passing into the service of other personages representing various ranks of life, shows himself no less ready to be- guile them. There is no attempt at palliation of the truth ; it is a picture of the bald and in- iquitous fact that is presented to us in the Ija^nrillcj and its successors. Realistic fiction of the sicflo de oro culminates in the magnificent Don Qnijote of Miguel Cer- vantes de Saavedra ( 1547-1616). a novel in which the matter-of-fact philosophy of Sancho Panza stands in sharp contrast with the grotesque ideal- ism of his master. It is not improbable that Cervantes wrote the book in order to destroy the vogue of the chivalrous romances, althonsh it may be urged that their popularity was already on the wane and that at the most he simply gave them the coup de nriiee. Don Qnijote (usually Don Qnixote in English) has become one of the world's imperishable books. The first part of it was published in 1605: the second part was hur- riedly prepared for the press in 1615. in order to baffle the designs of a certain Avellaneda. who had published a spurious seqiiel to the novel in 1614. Cervantes had much less success in an-