Meanwhile the Spanish lyric verse of the cancioneros, cultivated with much assiduity but with little genius, hardly concerns us, whether in its native form or when reshaped into sonnets and other varieties under Italian influence by “learned” poets like Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega. Of most importance is the fact that poetry of the latter kind was disfigured by Gongora, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century, into one of those styles of exaggerated preciosity which always seem to secure a temporary success by their very absurdity. The estilo culto, otherwise known as Gongorism, was a deliberate invention, of which the main features were the consistent avoidance of the natural word and, as far as possible, of the natural order. Such tricks were congenial to the Spanish taste, which has always been too much inclined, whether in verse or prose, to verbose and ornate expression. Gongorism is but a new species of Spanish artificiality in this respect—a national characteristic recognized and ridiculed by Shakespeare in his Don Armado. How much of the peculiar style of Lyly’s Euphues may be due to Spanish as well as Italian influences cannot be determined with any preciseness. But it should always be borne in mind that, after the marriage of Henry VIII with Catharine of Aragon, the English Court was frequented by Spaniards, and that, thanks to this fact, and the general prominence of Spain in the eyes of contemporary Europe, Spanish manners, whether of person or expression, were regarded as a proper subject of emulation by gallants and beaux esprits. This imitation extended far into the reign of Elizabeth. Before Gongora had introduced his new varieties of expression, this circle of Englishmen had been more or less familiar with the sententious antitheses and fantastic prolixities of the prose of Guevara (of the early sixteenth century), whose Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius and Golden Letters combined the characteristic proverbial philosophizing, often tediously platitudinarian, of his nation with its almost equally characteristic straining after uncommonness of phrase. Indeed it would seem that Elizabethan England caught from the Spaniards a taste for apophthegmatic wisdom which reached some among even the best of its writers, including no less a person than Bacon.
It only remains to remark briefly upon that form of literature which, apart from Cervantes, is the chief boast of Spain. This was the drama, established by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), and polished by Calderon a generation later. Spanish plays had begun in the usual manner with the performance of “Mysteries” and “Miracles,” of which the latter, when connected with the sacrament, were called autos. But from these Spain, like England, and unlike Italy or France, developed an entirely native species of drama. As in England, the attempts to impose the Senecan form, with its unities of place and time and its entire distinction of the tragic from the comic, entirely failed. But, unlike the drama of England, that of Lope de Vega and Calderon does not undertake to mirror human nature and action with all its various sides and complex motives. Its characters are but types, and, even as such, they are narrowly conceived. In the “cloak and sword” pieces a lady, a lover, a sober old man, and a clown, are the stock figures, who are brought into existence chiefly for the purpose of enacting their parts in certain ingenious and complicated intrigues with abundance of exciting or amusing situations. If Calderon shows a more finished style and a finer observation than Lope, his scope is otherwise the same. The Spanish stage does, indeed, like the French or Italian, affect frequent displays of rhetoric, but there the resemblance ends. Of special note among the comedias were those above mentioned as “cloak and sword” (de capa y espada). The title refers to the usual equipment of a typical Spaniard of the higher middle class, who was the most natural hero of adventures and intrigues. It is not difficult to find in Ben Jonson and Fletcher resemblances to these plays of Spain. In France, where Spanish influence was at its highest in the time of Lope, comedy was inevitably affected by much that was congenial in the tastes and lives of the two peoples, and with the Restoration the same influence reached England in an attenuated form. Perhaps the most amazing thing in all Spanish literature is the miraculous fecundity of Lope, to whom are credited nearly two thousand plays, dashed off with a rapidity which remains a unique phenomenon. In finish they are, of course, to seek; but the passableness of the verse thus composed, and the ingenuity of the plots conceived, are beyond denial. To the Spaniards Lope was “the prodigy of nature,” and “the Spanish phoenix.”
It is needless for our purpose to follow further the story of Spanish literature, which, since the seventeenth century, has been singularly barren, and, in any case, has exerted no appreciable effect whatever upon our own. On the whole it has been justly said that the writing of Spain has not been quite worthy of the nation. Perhaps its best work, leaving Cervantes aside, has been in history, from which, however, we have derived no definite influence which can be classed as literary. Apart from these its merits are those of inventiveness in plot and of a certain high conception of dignity—a most consistent trait of the Spaniard. But it is a literature wordy in expression, lacking in insight, and seldom concerning itself with the deeper interests of human life.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
Transcriber’s Note: An image of the original table is available by downloading the HTML version of the book from Project Gutenberg.
| DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. | CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK. | DATE. | SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fiction: | |||
| (a) Moral Tales | Don Juan MANUEL (Count Lucanor) | Early fourteenth century | Passed into stock of fabliaux and novelle, and thence occasionally reappear, e.g., in Taming of the Shrew. |
| CERVANTES (Novelas Exemplares) | 1613 | Utilized by later Elizabethan playwrights, e.g., Middleton’s Spanish Gipsy, Fletcher’s Fair Maid of the Inn. | |
| (b) Chivalric Romances (Libros de Caballerias) | Amadis of Gaul | Fourteenth century | The chivalric romances, combined with the pastoral, led (through D’Urfé) to the French “heroic romances” of La Calprenède and Scudéry. For their effect on English work, see [French Literature]. The Arcadia of Sidney and Spenser’s Shepheard’s Calender owe some influence to Montemayor. Diana was Englished at the end of the sixteenth century. |
| Palmerin, Palmerin of England, etc. | Fifteenth century | ||
| (c) Pastoral Romance (part prose, part verse) | MONTEMAYOR (Diana) | 1520-1562 | |
| CERVANTES (Galatea) | 1585 | ||
| (d) Romance of Common Life | Celestina (Calisto and Meliboea) | Fifteenth century | |
| Picaroon Novels (Novelas de Picaros) | Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzman de Alfarache | 1554, 1599 | The original source of the picaroon (or picaresque) novel, first seen in England in, e.g., Nash’s Jack Wilton. In France passed through Scarron to Lesage. Taken up by Defoe (Moll Flanders, etc.), Fielding (Joseph Andrews), Smollett (Roderick Random, etc.). Revived by Dumas and his followers. |
| QUEVEDO (Life of Buscon) | 1626 | ||
| (e) Satirical | CERVANTES (Don Quixote) | 1547-1616 (D.Q. 1605) | Greatly read and quoted in England at all times. Imitated in Butler’s Hudibras. |
| Poetry: | |||
| (a) Early Romance | Poem of the Cid | Twelfth and thirteenth centuries | |
| (b) Learned Poetry (lyric) | GARCILASO DE LA VEGA | 1530-1568 | |
| GONGORA | 1561-1627 | The estilo culto joins with Italian influence to create artificiality of style. | |
| Ethical Writing | Early Collection of Proverbs | Utilized in Caxton’s Dictes and Sayings, etc. | |
| GUEVARA (Golden Book and Golden Letters) | 1474-1546 | Much effect on Tudor England in encouraging apophthegmatic and sententious style. | |
| Drama | LOPE DE VEGA | 1562-1635 | The “cloak and sword” dramas of situation and intrigue influence plays of Jonson and Fletcher. French comedy sought material in Lope, and England was thence indirectly affected after the Restoration. |
| CALDERON | 1601-1681 |
(b) German Literature and English
For our purpose, which is that of surveying the influence exerted by other literatures upon both the form and contents of our own, the writings of Germany are of less prominence than those of the countries with which we have hitherto dealt. To Latin our debt has been great and continuous; to Greek it has been less continuous, but essentially much more important; to Italian it was a debt of considerable dimensions for some three centuries; to French it has been an extensive obligation at two different and well marked epochs of some duration and potency. But to German we owed but an inconsiderable debt until the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth, and, even since that time, the influence has been rather philosophical and scientific than literary—one affecting general currents of thought and methods of thinking rather than one affecting range of literary subject or manner of literary expression.
German “literature” at its best covers some half-century. The years from about 1770 to about 1820 were its golden period, the age of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. Since the latter date Heine alone stands forth as one of those names in pure literature which have a cosmopolitan, and not merely a German, significance. In speaking thus we are not forgetting minor poets like Uhland, or philosophers like Schopenhauer, or historians like Mommsen. But, in a literary inquiry of the present scope, we must not, on the one hand, confound science, even the science of philosophy, with literature; and, on the other, we must not lose our truth of perspective by magnifying the relatively small.