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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Simple pleasures: the pastoral novel
The pastoral novel swapped chivalrous knights for
shepherds, placing its cast in a rural idyll where the
upper crust of society enjoyed a simple life away from
the frightful modernity of city living.The bucolic content
was also well suited to poetry, often woven amid the
prose of the novel. In pastoral novels and poetry the
Italianate themes of the Renaissance began nibbling at
Spanish literature. Jorge de Montemayor was an
important name; Portuguese but working in Spanish,
he wrote the wildly popularLos siete libros de la Diana
(c.1559).The book’s lead character, Diana, inspired a raft
of sequels. Miguel de Cervantes later tried his hand at
the pastoral novel peppered with poetry in his first
book,La Galatea(1585). Pastoral novels were often
writtenà clef: the characters (usually shepherds) were
based on real people known to the author.
Roguish charms: the picaresque novel
The most significant literary innovation of the Golden Age, resonant of a
new sophistication among authors and readers, was the picaresque novel.
The name comes frompícaro, a word the Spanish use for a rogue, and the
central figures were usually of dubious moral character. Below the ‘pure
blood’ nobles of Baroque Spain hovered a middle-class vacuum left by the
expulsion of Jews and Moors. Picaresque novels focussed on the troupe of
chancers and misbehaving lowlife trying to fill this vacancy by any available
means. Essentially, the books were a foil to the righteous escapism of
the chivalric novel.The first wasLazarillo deTormes(1554), published
anonymously, but Mateo Alemán’sGuzmán de Alfarache(1599-1604) was
more influential, establishing realism (often with a satirical edge) as a key
tenet of the Spanish novel.The rascally Guzmán of the title looks back over
a life of dastardly deeds, including painting fake sores on his legs to win
charitable handouts. Eventually he finds solace through conversion; an
ending perhaps born of the author’s need to placate censors and the
Church. It was a Europe-wide hit.
Brought to book
Lazarillo de Tormes,
usually credited as the
first picaresque novel,
had the honour of
making it on to the
Catholic Church’sIndex
Librorum Prohibitorum,
a list of banned books.
Digs about clerical
hypocrisy were
apparently to blame.
