Movements and schools
The Spanish Golden Age
The peak of Spanish letters, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A gentleman who has read too much takes to the roads to right wrongs and mistakes windmills for giants: in 1605 Cervantes invented at once the parody of chivalric romance and the modern novel, in which characters have read books. The same century saw Lope de Vega write hundreds of comedias for a popular audience, Quevedo push satire into cruelty, Góngora twist syntax into learned obscurity, and Calderón ask on stage whether life is not a dream. The empire exhausts itself while the theatre fills the courtyards.
works 5
- NovelDon QuixoteDon Quijote de la ManchaMiguel de Cervantes · 1605A hidalgo who takes himself for a knight errant sets out to right wrongs, with a neighbouring peasant as his squire.LiteraturePublic domain
- TheatrePeribáñez and the Comendador of OcañaPeribáñez y el comendador de OcañaLope de Vega · 1614A Castilian town, where a lord covets the wife of a well-off peasant who has just married.LiteraturePublic domain
- NovelThe GrifterEl BuscónFrancisco de Quevedo · 1626The son of poor people from Segovia wants to pass himself off as a gentleman and tells of his own falls.LiteraturePublic domain
- TheatreLife Is a DreamLa vida es sueñoPedro Calderón de la Barca · 1635Taken from his tower and placed on the throne for a single day, Prince Sigismund must prove that he is not the tyrant foretold.Literature
- PoetryFields of CastileCampos de CastillaAntonio Machado · 1912Poems on the lands and the men of Castile, written in Soria at the beginning of the twentieth century.LiteraturePublic domain