Notes on Colonial Baroque Literature

Minas sin plata, sin verdad mineros

  • A poem describing a city filled with contradictions and vices:

    • Lack of silver despite miners being present.

    • Greedy merchants.

    • People pretending to be noble.

    • Women selling themselves for money.

    • False friends.

    • Disobedient black slaves.

    • Husbands unable to control their households.

    • Wives gambling.

    • Petitioners hanging around the viceroy.

    • Markets, auctions, and chaos.

The Theater

  • Originated in America through dramatic adaptations by missionaries.

  • Purpose: Education and evangelization of indigenous people.

  • First theatrical performance: 1526 in Tenochtitlán (five years after its fall to Cortés).

  • Mexico and Lima competed with autos sacramentales, featuring large open-air stages.

  • Early Spanish dramas adapted for the colonies appeared in San Domingo.

  • Cristóbal de Llerena: First Creole playwright; his entremés was performed in 1588 during Corpus Christi celebrations.

  • Religious theater transitioned to secular entertainment (e.g., Fernán González de Eslava's entremeses).

  • Fernán González de Eslava:

    • Seville native who shared Mexico's emerging cultural scene with Francisco de Terrazas.

    • Incorporated local language and comedic situations into his plays.

    • His work highlighted the Creole character.

    • Menéndez y Pelayo described Eslava as a prolific and witty writer, rich in contemporary allusions.

The Baroque

  • The Baroque period in the 17th and 18th centuries represents the creative peak of the colonial era.

  • It resulted from cultural advancement supported by economic and social development.

  • Emergence of new literary genres and lasting works by significant American writers.

From Renaissance to Baroque

  • The term "baroque" originates from the Latin "verruca" through the word "berrueco," meaning an irregular pearl.

  • Initially used to describe the ornamental exaggeration in post-Renaissance architecture.

  • Baroque art emphasizes movement and intensity, contrasting with Renaissance principles.

  • Wolfflin's distinctions between Renaissance and Baroque art:

    • Renaissance Art:

      • Linear vision

      • Superficiality

      • Unity

      • Clarity

      • Complexity

    • Baroque Art:

      • Pictorial vision

      • Depth

      • Multiplicity

      • Darkness

      • Density

Vision

Vision Lineal vs. Pictorial:

  • Renaissance: Linear, with defined objects and contours.

  • Baroque: Focus on color, blurring lines, using chiaroscuro and strong contrasts of light and shadow.

Superficiality vs. Depth

  • Renaissance: Composition on a single surface with organized perspective planes.

  • Baroque: Overlapping elements creating depth.

Unity vs. Multiplicity

  • Renaissance: Harmonic whole.

  • Baroque: Multiple parts combined into a single motif, with parts subordinate to a main element.

Clarity vs. Obscurity

  • Renaissance: Clear representation.

  • Baroque: Abandonment of linear representation, resulting in a lack of clarity.

  • Light, color, and composition become confused.

Complexity vs. Density

  • Renaissance: Closed form, limited complexity, balance (e.g., Rafael Sanzio).

  • Baroque: Open form, asymmetrical, unstable composition (e.g., El Greco).

  • The "open work" with multiple axes is reprised in contemporary arts, explaining the relevance of Baroque (or Neo-Baroque) art in 20th-century Hispanic American literature and arts.

Baroque Architecture in the Indies

  • New World cathedrals show the transition from Renaissance to Baroque styles.

  • Catedral de Santo Domingo: First example of American Plateresque style, attributed to Rodrigo Gil de Liendo.

  • Metropolitan cathedrals of Mexico and Lima (started between 1563 and 1572): Represent the conflict between Renaissance rigidity and Baroque multiplicity.

  • 18th-century colonial temples developed a distinct Baroque style, different from European art, with regional characteristics:

    • Mexican Baroque (e.g., Jesuit Temple of San Martín Tepotzotlán, Cathedral of Zacatecas).

    • Central American Baroque (e.g., Iglesia de Santa Clara, Guatemala).

    • Baroque of Quito, Nueva Granada (e.g., Templo de Santo Domingo, Tunja, Colombia), and Peru (e.g., Iglesia de La Merced, Lima).

  • Retables, gold ornamentation, colorful imagery, materials, climate, and geography contribute to regional variations of a universal art form.

  • Colonial American art found in the Baroque differentiating factors between European forms and its independent expression.

  • Baroque in the visual arts sought to represent nature's and humanity's vitality and exaltation, contrasting with the static, serene Renaissance.

  • It began in visual arts, then expanded to architecture, literature and other 17th-century arts.

  • The optimism of Renaissance humanism was replaced by the anxiety and pessimism of the new man disillusioned with life.

Renaissance and Baroque

In the 16th century, visual art, if not always being able to define easily, shows contrast of free-expression. Concepts of: stable equilibrium vs, unstable equilibrium

  • In the 16th century, elements in a painting were organized around a central axis or balanced perfectly.

  • 17th-century art deliberately opposed the idea of a central axis.

  • Pure symmetries disappeared or were disguised through equilibrium displacements.

  • Heinrich Wolfflin: Fundamental Concepts in Art History (1952)

  • In Spain, the Baroque reflected the national crisis during the decline of Spanish prestige and hegemony after Philip II's death.

  • Linked to the Counter-Reformation (after the Council of Trent in 1545), modifying the Renaissance humanist vision.

  • During Philip III's reign (1598-1621), Spain declined economically.

  • Art reflected this imbalance by concealing disillusionment behind ornamental forms.

  • The Baroque style is dynamic, complicated, and seeks contrasts between seriousness and triviality, beauty and grotesqueness, the ideal and the real.

  • Culteranismo (Góngora) uses complicated forms understood only by the educated elite.

  • Conceptismo (Quevedo) employs ingenious concepts and satire to hide a deep disenchantment with life.

  • Góngora and Quevedo: Key figures in poetry, oratory, prose, and theater.

  • Tendency towards evasion, obscurity, hyperbole, exaggeration, and formal complexity.

  • Reaction against the static balance of the Renaissance.

  • Shift from Garcilaso's balanced world in Eglogas to Góngora's elaborate ornamentations in Soledades.

Góngora's Barroquism

  • The complexity and obscurity in Góngora's poetry mark the culmination of a new style.

  • Spread from the court of Madrid to Mexico and Lima.

  • In works like Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea and Soledades, Góngora disrupted the harmony of Renaissance poetry.

  • His barroquism, similar to architectural masses, is covered in decorations and multiple, obscuring forms.

  • Góngora's style replaces everyday reality with metaphorical language, aiming to embellish vulgar reality.

Example of Góngora's Metaphorical Language:

  • Instead of directly naming chickens, he refers to them as:

… crestadas aves
cuyo lascivo esposo vigilante
doméstico es del Sol nuncio canoro,
y - de coral barbado - no de oro
ciñe, sino de púrpura, turbante.

El lenguaje barroco/Baroque language

  • Diverges from direct language into novel, creative, and lavish associations.

  • Culteranismo or cultismo features: enriched vocabulary with Latin neologisms, altered syntax using hyperbaton, bold metaphors, and mythological figures.

  • Mulatos: offspring of a spanish person and a black person

  • Castiza: offspring of a mestizo person and a spanish person

  • Example of a poem

The Baroque in the Indies

  • The Baroque style emerged in 17th-century American colonies.

  • Expressed in colonial architecture, the poetry of Bernardo de Balbuena and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the theater of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón.

  • Similar to German, Italian, and Spanish Baroque, there was also an American Baroque.

  • Synthesis or symbiosis of Hispanic culture and the original vision of the new society in the Indies.

  • Americanism began to be expressed within a Baroque style, evident in art, life, fashion, and courtly artifice.

  • Colonial churches in Mexico and Peru exemplify this blend.

  • Baroque Art:

    • A courtly and erudite art.

    • Found fertile ground in the viceroyalties.

    • Developed into the first great cultural manifestation of Hispanic America.

Characteristics regarding the study of American Baroque:

In society

  • Courtly, witty, aristocratic art.

  • Developed in courts, emphasizing courtesy.

  • Aimed to impress and astonish, accentuating external characters(life and art as a spectacle).

In literature

  • Open forms.

  • Poem unity through overlapping axes disrupting the Renaissance central axis.

  • Details and subordinate axes.

  • Evident in Góngora’s long poems or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Primero sueño.

  • Dynamic, exalting rhetoric, complex theme of confusion.

  • Intensification of stylistic procedures.

  • Use of rhetorical figures, antithesis, contrasts, hyperboles, and metaphors.

  • creates formulas that overflows.

In Stylistic procedures

  • Baroque art emphasized "artificiality" over the "natural" Renaissance.

  • It broke the balance between nature and art, favoring art.

  • Pedro de Espinosa: the idea that art overcomes matter..

  • Art competes with nature using verbal imagery for a literary symphony.

  • Tendency towards wit, wordplay, ornamentation, and intricate paraphrasing.

  • Sensory world descriptions: "terso marfil" (smooth ivory) for forehead, "vaso de claveles" (vase of carnations) for skin, "de mármol" (of marble) for body, "dátiles de alabastro" (alabaster dates) for fingers.

  • hair of gold, eyes of diamonds, lips of coral.

Example of culteranismo from Juana Inés de la Cruz:

  • Uses vocabulary of: canoro, cerúleo, cóncavo, ebúrneo, embrión, funesto, horrendo, pompa ( vocabulary enrichished of latin neologisms)

  • Hyperbaton

  • Allussions and elusions

  • Repetition of fórmulas

  • Mitological allusions

  • Play of wit

  • Antithesis

Literary Genres of the American Baroque

Epic and Religious Poetry

  • Epic poetry continued to develop in Spain and America.

  • Bernardo de Balbuena: A key figure in the genre.

  • Fray Diego de Hojeda (1571-1615): Wrote La Cristiada in Lima.

    • Considered the finest Baroque poem on the life, passion, and death of Christ.

Lyric and Mystical Poetry

  • Culteranismo/Gongorism dominated, alternating between profane and sacred love.

  • Sor Francisca Josefa del Castillo y Guevara (La Madre Castillo; 1671-1742):

    • Nun from Tunja, Boyacá, Colombia.

    • Afectos expresses religious sentiments.

    • Her prose, along with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, stands out.

  • Jacinto de Evia: First lyric poet of Ecuador.

    • Compiled Ramillete de varias flores poéticas..

    • Featured his poems and those of Colombian Domínguez Camargo (1601-1656).

    • Camargo's sonnets and romances gained belated recognition.

    • His complete works were collected in a critical edition by Rafael Torres Quintero in 1960.

Satirical Poetry

  • Revitalized by Quevedo's influence.

  • Became aggressive sarcasm of anonymous and popular origin.

  • Juan del Valle Caviedes (1652-1697): Author of Diente del Parnaso.

Erudite and Imaginative Prose

  • Historical chronicles continued, replacing personal accounts with scholarly interpretations.

  • Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita (1624-1688), Universidad Tomística de Bogotá: Wrote Historia de las conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1688).
    Compared to Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios reales.
    *Juan Rodríguez Freile (1566-1640): Published El carnero in Nueva Granada.
    *Included fables, satires, tales, anecdotes, adventures, humor, and social criticism.*
    Alonso de Ovalle (1601-1651): Wrote Histórica relación del Reino de Chile, a collection of descriptions of the landscape and cities
    *

  • Juan de Espinosa Medrano (Peru, 1640-1688): A foremost essayist and literary critic.
    Published El apologético en favor de don Luis de Góngora*
    The Apologético analyzed Gongora's poetry.

Mystical Prose

Sor Francisca Josefa del Castillo y Guevara: One of the colonial period's finest figures.
Other greatest talents of the colony: Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo (Lima, 1663-1743) & Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (México, 1645-1700).
Both men with encyclopedic mathematical, astronomy, and geography culture, demonstrate the change that occurs in the culmination of the colonial period.

The Theater

  • From the 17th century onward, Spanish theater was popular in the Indies.

  • Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón, and Moreto were performed.

  • The first theater was the Casa de Comedias de don Francisco de León in Mexico.

  • The first coliseum was built in Lima in 1662.

  • A famous Creole actress, la Perricholi, performed in this coliseum around 1760.

  • Juan Ruiz de Alarcón is the most significant figure in colonial theater.

  • Theatrical pieces by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz are Calderonian comedies and autos sacramentales.

  • At the end of the colonial period, Pedro de Peralta y Barnuevo’s comedies led to the decline of Spanish theater and the appearance of French models such as Molière, Corneille, and Racine.

Journalism

  • Most important books were printed in Spain.

  • The appearance of presses in America facilitated the printing of religious works.

  • The first publication was in Lima in 1594.

  • "La Gaceta de México y Noticias de Nueva España" was published in 1722.

  • Guatemala was the second American city with a newspaper.

  • "Gazeta de Goathemala" was published in 1729.

  • In 1790, "El Diario de Lima" and "Mercurio Peruano" provided commercial news.

Bernardo de Balbuena

  • Born in Valdepeñas, Spain, in 1562, lived in New Spain (Mexico) from a young age.

  • Educated in Mexico, became a priest, and earned a doctorate in theology from the University of Sigüenza.

  • Bishop of Puerto Rico, died in 1627.

  • Key Works: Grandeza mexicana, El Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erifile, and El Bernardo.

  • Balbuena's writing is filled with rich imagination.

  • Contemporaneous with Góngora, his writing style stands apart.
    El Bernardo del Carpio o la Victoria de Roncesvalles includes twenty-five books.

Juan de Alarcón

  • Colonist playwright. Born during barroque period
    His dramatics where made and published in Spain, raising the question of the “mexicanism” of his works

  • His works where made and published in Spain. Raising the question of the “mexicanism” of his works.

  • Menéndez y Pelayo didn't think of him as a Mexican escritor due to the lack of “American colors” in his production.
    1617 he presents in Mardid, Las paredes oyen. His plays include screwball comedies. That bring enterteinment in the trascent mission that gives a social critique.
    In the 1617, he presentes in Mardid, Las paredes oyen. Plays include screwball comedies, that bring enterteinment withtrascent mission from the social critique

4 works revels the sobriated transition of his work:

  • La verdad sospechosos

  • Las paredes oyen

  • No hay mal que por bien no venga

  • Los pechos provilegiados

He has a Mesurada protest

  • Moralist mode.

  • Conventionality

  • Apego a las cosas

  • Escasez de vuelo.

Jacinto de Evia (1620-?)

  • He was the first lirical Ecuatorian. The poetry that would gave the independence that named Jose Joaquin de Olmedo, born in the XVII Century

  • Made the famous book titled - Ramillete de varias flores poéticas -.

Juan del Valle Caviedes

  • was and author born in Spain, move to America when very young.

  • Caviedes was the author of poesía satírica, lírica ,teatro y prosa.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

  • Juana Inés de Asbaje, daughter of the Spanish captain Pedro Manuel de Asbaje and de Isabel Ramírez, was born on November 12, 1651

  • She wanted to study a the university so bad.

  • Universidad so bad, but that could not happen.

Her first steps started cause if autodidactism genius.

  • At the age of seven she wishes to change dressed so she could have acces to school.

  • Her natural state that comes when the little star starts to write, makes here had an erudite knowledge from theology, rhetoric, physics, music, arithmetic, history, astrology and other science

Women into the court, were very important for her.

  • Sor Juana worked for works for the queen of Cerda and Aragon doing triumphal reception.

  • As Pedro salina sad, Juana the Asbaje is an intellectual personality. In 1690 publishes in Mexico the auto del divino narcissus

  • In 1695 renueva los votos religiosos, 17 de abril de ese año, after she died.

  • Her art include multiple thing of religion and mundane

  • Juana, is full of literature ,from prose, theatre

  • Her extraordinary capacidad poetry includes lírical

  • Religious
    The first and most complete poem of here is El divino Narciso, Juana work includes prose .