Religious literature. The new age, however, is not without its debts towards Erasmian Humanism or the classicism of the time of Charles V, on the contrary, perhaps the most marked interest of the new religious production is precisely in its combination with Renaissance forms. Certain nuances of the relationship between earthly and otherworldly life, present in mystics, would not be understood without the Platonic idealism of the early years of the century: the cognitive anxiety of L. Ponce de León is pervaded, and the doctrine of John draws inspiration from it of the Angels (Triunfos del amor de Dios, 1590; Manual de vida perfecta, 1608). Around the work of Ponce de León, ascetic preaching already transforms the classical forms into a more complex and changeable language, which must adapt to the practical purposes of disclosure, translate the mystical rapture into words, communicate the fervor and languor of ecstasy, and again to yield to the subtle speculations of doctrinal disputes. In this way, two experiences continuously intertwined with each other are created, one, so to speak, deeply humanistic, the other intolerant of precepts, aimed at new forms of rhetoric and outpouring, no less decisive for the affirmation of a baroque language than the love lyric of the same years can be.
● Even the transposition into sacred of profane motifs (literature a lo divino) is an aspect of this dynamism of forms created by the new religiosity: by virtue of it, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the heroes of the chivalry were transformed into defenders of the faith and the language of pagan love was deified. One of the aspects of the art of St. Teresa d’Ávila (Libro de su vida, composed between 1562 and 1565; Castillo interior or Libro de las stai moradas, 1577) and by s. Giovanni della Croce (Cántico espiritual, Noche oscura del alma, written between 1577 and 1584), the two major reformers and mystics of the sixteenth century, is precisely the transformation of a profane material, often Renaissance, and its molding to the needs of poetry and religious didactics. This continuous ebb and flow of Renaissance expressions is the dominant motif in profane, heroic and amorous lyricism, which in recent years has its most fruitful center in the Seville school and its teacher in F. de Herrera. It is a poem in which Petrarchism has reached full formal maturity, but it contains precise seeds of dissolution, closing itself in a labor of continuous improvement.
Aristotelianism. Almost completely independent of the history of poetry is the history of Aristotelianism in Spain. Imitations of Italian poetics do not appear until after 1570; the first truly Aristotelian treatise, the Filosofía antigua poética (1596) by A. López Pinciano, appears only in the last years of the century; and individual precocious acquaintances of Aristotle’s Poetics or of works by Italian Aristotelians do not prevent us from affirming that Spanish culture remained Neo-Platonic until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Not that the work of Herrera, Ponce de León or their pupils, F. de Figueroa, F. de Medrano, F. Pacheco, punctually obeys Neoplatonic theories; but in Neoplatonism the vague idealistic aspirations typical of Petrarchian and Arcadian language are reflected on the one hand, and of the amorous anxiety of the mystics on the other.
Narrative poem and theater. Meanwhile, in the age of Philip II, the narrative poem ends in the academic experiments of J. Rufo, L. Zapata, A. de Ercilla (Araucana, 1569-89), while the pastoral story, born late on the trunk of Arcadian literature and Neoplatonism, G. Gil Polo, in G. Suárez de Figueroa.
● The situation of the theater is not dissimilar, in which the disagreement, which already belonged to Torres Naharro and Vicente, has not yet been resolved, between a popular basic inspiration and conformity with respect to classical comedy, so much so that, for example, the memory of an author like L. de Rueda is still alive not for the complicated imitations of the Italian Renaissance comedy, but for the burlesque vein of the pasos, small popular interludes, while J. de la Cueva finds a certain freedom of invention when one away from the Aiaci, the Virginie, the Scevola, and turns to the Romancero and medieval chronicles to stage the popular exploits of the Infanti di Lara and Bernardo del Carpio, along a line that will be that of L. de Vega and the theater seventeenth century. 3.7 Cervantes. At the beginning of the new century, one of the most important works of European literature appeared, the Quijote (1605-15) by M. de Cervantes y Saavedra. Cervantes is not an innovator. Traditionalist by instinct, faced with L. de Vega’s theatrical reform, L. de Góngora’s conceptualism and culteranism, he was a culturally committed man, without thereby being an ideologue specifically concerned with religious and aesthetic problems. First he is a narrator, still not convinced, in the youthful Galatea (1585), according to the schemes of the pastoral novel; then dramatist of strict classicist and Aristotelian observance in Numancia (written between 1582 and 1587); later it is dissolving from the initial academicism of the first Novelas ejemplares (1613), while obeying the literariness of the Italian and sixteenth-century narrative medium, to whose themes he always remains faithful, even in the short stories included in the Quijote. It is no coincidence that the Quijote is born from the idea that a popular entremés offers the writer, for a satirical diversion on one of the most popular genres up to the whole of the sixteenth century, the chivalric novel; and it is no coincidence that in the last period of his life Cervantes immerses himself in that tangle of amorous adventures and vicissitudes that is Persiles (1617), precisely following the forms of the old ‘Byzantine’ novel, animated by the obsession of build another novel, typologically different from the Quijote, in the wake of certain canons, thereby demonstrating a sure propensity for realism. for a satirical diversion on one of the most popular genres up to the whole of the sixteenth century, the chivalrous novel; and it is no coincidence that in the last period of his life Cervantes immerses himself in that tangle of amorous adventures and vicissitudes that is Persiles (1617), precisely following the forms of the old ‘Byzantine’ novel, animated by the obsession of build another novel, typologically different from the Quijote, in the wake of certain canons, thereby demonstrating a sure propensity for realism. for a satirical diversion on one of the most popular genres up to the whole of the sixteenth century, the chivalrous novel; and it is no coincidence that in the last period of his life Cervantes immerses himself in that tangle of amorous adventures and vicissitudes that is Persiles (1617), precisely following the forms of the old ‘Byzantine’ novel, animated by the obsession of build another novel, typologically different from the Quijote, in the wake of certain canons, thereby demonstrating a sure propensity for realism.