Spanish Baroque literature

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Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during the 17th century in which prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, or the poetic production of the aforementioned Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora reached their zenith. Spanish Baroque literature is a period of writing which begins approximately with the first works of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, and continues into the late 17th century.^[1]

The fundamental characteristics of Spanish Baroque literature are the progressive complexity in formal resources and a theme centered on the concern for the passage of time and the loss of confidence in the Neoplatonic ideals of the Renaissance. Likewise, the variety and diversity in the subjects dealt with, the attention to detail and the desire to attract a wide audience, of which the rise of the Lope de Vega comedies are an example. From the dominant sensual concern in the 16th century, there was an emphasis on moral values and didactics, where two currents converge: Neostoicism and Neoepicureism. El Criticón from Baltasar Gracián is a point of arrival in the baroque reflection on man and the world, the awareness of disappointment, a vital pessimism and a general crisis of values.

The genres are mixed, Luis de Góngora wrote lyrical poetry of the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea that makes virtue of difficulty, with romances and burlesque satirical works, of wide popular diffusion and the two currents are hybridized in the Fábula de Príamo y Tisbe; Quevedo wrote metaphysical and moral poems, while writing about vulgar and popular matters.

The Spanish Baroque theater configures a popular scene that has endured as a classic production for future theater. The philosophical dramas of Calderón de la Barca, of which Life Is a Dream is an outstanding example, represent a zenith in Spanish dramatic production and is part of a period of splendor that receives the generic name of the Spanish Golden Age.