Spanish Renaissance Literature - The Renaissance Prose

The Renaissance Prose

As it is logical, great part of the narrative subgenera of the 15th century continued to be alive throughout the 16th century (for example, the sentimental novels of the late fifteenth / early sixteenth century --particularly Juan de Flores's Grisel y Mirabella, Diego de San Pedro's Cárcel de amor and Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina -- continued to enjoy enormous European success); nevertheless, there are three that deserve special attention: the pastoral novel, the dicactic prose, and the religious prose.

The pastoral novel is of Italian origin, like the sentimental novel. About the year of 1558 the first Spanish text pertaining to this genre appeared: La Diana, written by Jorge de Montemayor. The success of this type of narrative made that great authors of the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th, like Lope de Vega (La Arcadia) or Miguel de Cervantes (La Galatea), cultivated it.

During the reign of Felipe II, which includes the years from 1557 to 1597, the religious literature had its greater boom in Spain. The religiosity of the monarch, the spirit of the Counterreformation and the customs of the time were part in the extraordinary importance that this genre reached. The didactic and religious literature is very vast, because it includes:

• The Apologetics, which displays arguments for the religion;
• The Ascetic, that tends to instil the rules of the moral; and
• The Mystic, that searches for the knowledge of God within the own spirit, by means of the contemplation and the meditation. The production of the mystics of the 16th century is of great importance, mainly for the growth and robustness of the language.