The Literature Book

78

S

traddling the 16th and

17th centuries, Spain’s

Golden Century refers to

an extraordinary flourishing of the

arts that began with the nation’s

rise to superpower status via the

wealth of its colonies in America.

Under the Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V (reigned 1519–56), there

was a free flow of ideas across

Europe, with Spain’s writers

responding to the excitement of

the Renaissance. New techniques

in storytelling, verse, and drama

produced defining prose, poetry,

and plays. The anonymously

authored Lazarillo de Tormes

featured a picaro (young rascal)

narrator of mixed fortunes, giving

the world a new literary genre—the

picaresque novel. Experimentation

with verse forms as well as meter

characterized the work of poet

Garcilaso de la Vega. And the

dramatist Lope de Vega produced

a vast and dazzling oeuvre of 1,800

plays—rich in character, plot, and

history—together with sonnets,

novellas, and lyric poetry.

In the same period, Miguel de

Cervantes produced Don Quixote

(originally titled The Ingenious

Gentleman Don Quixote), the

defining literary achievement of the

Golden Century. Like Lope de Vega,

he was writing near the end of an

era, as Spain began to decline due to

a combination of despotic rule,

religious fanaticism, and dwindling

fortunes after the English defeat of

the Armada. Out of this climate of

flux leapt Don Quixote, an eccentric

hero who bestrides a romantic

past and an unstable present in a

chivalric adventure that continues

to enchant and inspire.

Engagement with reality

Just as the plays of Cervantes’

contemporary William Shakespeare

are at the origin of modern drama,

so Don Quixote is at the origin of

modern fiction. Both writers delved

into the motivations, actions, and

emotions of their protagonists in

a way that had not been attempted

before, lending such characters as

Hamlet, Macbeth, and Don Quixote

a psychological complexity that

made them seem real.

Don Quixote engages with

reality on two main levels. The

main character of Cervantes’ novel

is enthralled by the knightly heroes

of earlier chivalric romances, and

renames himself “Don Quixote” in

Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes was born

near Madrid, Spain, in 1547.

His mother was the daughter

of a nobleman, his father was

a medical practitioner. Little is

known of Cervantes’ early life,

but it is likely that he lived and

worked in Rome around 1569,

before enlisting in the Spanish

Navy. Badly wounded in the Battle

of Lepanto (in which an alliance of

southern European Catholic states

defeated Ottoman forces), he was

captured by the Turks in 1575

and spent five years in prison in

Algiers; his ransom was paid by

a Catholic religious order, and he

returned to Madrid. Cervantes’

first major work, La Galatea,

was published in 1585. He

struggled financially but

kept writing, finding success

(though not wealth) with Don

Quixote. He died in 1616, in

Madrid, but his coffin was later

lost. In 2015, scientists claimed

to have unearthed his remains

in a convent in Madrid.

Other key works

1613 Exemplary Novels

1617 Persiles and

Sigismunda (unfinished)

DON QUIXOTE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Spain’s Golden Century

BEFORE

1499 The story of a procuress

told in a series of dialogues,

La Celestina, by Fernando de

Rojas, marks the beginning of

a literary renaissance in Spain.

1554 The anonymously

published novella The Life

of Lazarillo de Tormes and of

His Fortunes and Adversities

invents a new form—the

picaresque.

AFTER

1609 Lope de Vega, Spain’s

most prolific playwright and

a major poet, publishes his

artistic manifesto New Rules

for Writing Plays at this Time

to justify his writing style.

1635 Pedro Calderón de la

Barca’s philosophical allegory

Life is a Dream is one of the

Golden Century’s most widely

translated works.

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