Cervantes deserves an exceptional place in Spanish literature for his extraordinary talents as a storyteller. His indisputable masterpiece is the best-known work in Spanish literature, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote. de la Mancha The author defines with this work that the purpose of a novel is to reveal the abhorrence of the hypocritical individual behavior, mortally criticizing also the absurd response of the public to the popular chivalric novels, a badly writing literature that only incline its readers to leisure and bad habits. 

Don Quijote was an immediate success. As soon as it was released, groups of people will spontaneously gather to read it like a comic book,  perhaps because it was an amusing parody of the at that time popular abundant chivalric novels. With the passing of time, critics began to consider it as a classic. Don Quijote, the Knight of La Mancha, becomes a symbol of the man who fights only for the triumph of the spirit without being intimidated by the obstacles that the prosaic reality puts on him. All the highly spiritualized character traits of don Quijote are highlighted by the striking contrast to his counterpart,  his squire Sancho, rude, gluttonous, and rustic. Sancho does not understand the extravagances of the idealistic knight whom he serves but follows him, trusting at first on don Quijote's promises of riches but ultimately by giving an example of fidelity. 

Cervantes demonstrates with the wide diversity of techniques and styles used in his prose a perfect command of the language. He utilizes with ease the multiple artifacts of the novel during the Renaissance prose, using them consistently with fine irony and a burlesque tone, mixing it with a more natural and simple language that results in his particular mark of a very personal style.

Don Quijote

La Galatea

Novelas ejemplares

Viaje del Parnaso

Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda

Don Quijote de la Mancha narrates the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a poor gentleman who, from an excessive reading of chivalric novels, ends up going mad and believing that he is a knight-errant, like the protagonists of these novels.

Fiction

Humor

During the 16th century, the medieval vision of the world enters into crisis. The Renaissance was defined by a substantial and absolute division between Nature and Spirituality. The world of the senses and the world of the spirit was intimately fused in the man of the Middle Ages, to the point that there was one and the same thing. The Renaissance, with its radical individualism, signified a revolutionary change of position that separated the human being from the omniscient spirituality of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance proclaimed that the Middle Age was only a dark period between Antiquity and its time. In this sense, the Renaissance is not a mere cultural period, but a new conception of life that manifests itself in aspects such as politics and science, as well as literature. There is a conscious search for a language full of natural elegance, with a predominance of the novel in different types, chivalry, pastoral, Moorish, and the picaresque among the most popular ones.

During the Renaissance, an enormous effort was made to clearly delimit the world of the individual, separated from the spiritual realm. The independence of the human being was proclaimed on the basis that God and man are two incommunicable entities.  Following Calvin's thought, the creature could not influence the behavior nor the inscrutable decisions of the Creator, the first one predestined from birth.  It was the task of the Spanish theologians at the Council of Trent who fought such a doctrine, proclaiming an intimate connection between God and man. The consequences of Trento were incalculable for the world of culture in Spain, the country exempt from heresy by the council but its cultural future was also determined by it. As the sixteenth century progressed towards its end, the natural and the supernatural world tended to draw closer together for the Spaniards, with the scientific pursuit, and the mere intent of rational thinking viewed with deep suspicion.

Notwithstanding, there is also in Spain an advance in science and discoveries are made, accompanied by a development of urban life and incipient capitalism. The reign of the Catholic Monarchs and later during the  Empire there was a development of humanism, man becoming the center of the universe, with the courtier as the ideal Renaissance man, and a renewed interest in the study of the authors of Antiquity.  The discovery of the printing press in Europe triggered movements of reform, propitiating in Spain a response with the development of particular religious literature known as mysticism. 

Renaissance

Cancionero musical de palacio

Cancionero General, by Hernando del Castillo

Propaplladia, by Bartolomé de Torres Naharro

Retrato de la Lozana andaluza, by Francisco Delicado

Diálogo de la doctrina cristiana, by Jan de Valdés

Relox de príncipes, by Fray Antonio de Guevara

Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea, by Fray Antonio de Guevara

Obras from Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega

Vida del lazarillo de Tormes (anonimous)

Publication of Indice de libros prohibidos by the Spanish Inquisition

First edition of Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor (Abencerraje include)

First part of Araucana, by Alonso de Ercilla

The  Inquisition jails fray Luis de León for translating The Song of Songs into Spanish

Obras, by Cristobal de Castilejo

La vida es sueño, by Calderón de la Barca

Soledades, by Góngora

Empresas políticas, by Saavedra Fajardo

Civil wars of Granada (first part), by Ginés Pérez de Hita

El Parnaso español, by Quevedo

Las Meninas by Velazquez

Edition of the first French encyclopedia. Diderot's work, although widely criticized, can be considered the first modern encyclopedia.

Samuel Johnson publishes the Dictionary of the English language, with uses, customs and definitions of the words that make up the English language. Includes terms that appear in Shakespeare and other great authors of British literature.

The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Aminta, by Tasso

The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare

Spanish Bites

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El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605)

By Miguel de Cervantes

Time Period: Renaissance

Genre: Fiction, Humor

Spanish Bites

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