A History of Spanish Literature

The reign of Felipe IV. opens with as fair a promise of achievement as any in history. At Madrid, in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century, the court of the Gr...

The death of Felipe II. in 1598 closes an epoch in the history of Castilian letters. Not merely has the Italian influence triumphed definitively: the chivalresque romance has we...

In Spain, as elsewhere, the secular battle waged between classicism and romanticism. As poets sided with Boscán and Garcilaso, or with Castillejo, so dramatists declared for the...

The most ancient monuments of Castilian literature can be referred to no time later than the twelfth century, and they have been dated earlier with some plausibility. As with me...

With the arrival of printing-presses in 1474 the diffusion of foreign models became general throughout Spain. The closing years of the reign of the Catholic Kings were essential...

Intellectual interaction between Spain and France is an inevitable outcome of geographical position. To the one or to the other must belong the headship of the Latin races; for...

Letters, arts, and even rational politics, practically died in Spain during the reign of Carlos II. Good work was done in serious branches of study: in history by Gaspar Ibáñez...

The literary movement of Juan II.'s reign is overlapped and continued outside Spain by poets in the train of Alfonso V. of Aragón, who, conquering Naples in 1443, became the pat...

Only the barest mention need be made of a "clerkly poem" called the _Vida de San Ildefonso_ (Life of St. Ildephonsus), a dry narrative of over a thousand lines, probably written...

To write an account of contemporary literature is an undertaking not less tempting than to write the history of contemporary politics. Its productions are likely to be familiar...

If we reject the claim of Lope de Moros to be the author of the _Razón feita d'Amor_, the first Castilian poet whose name reaches us is GONZALO DE BERCEO (?1198-?1264), a secula...

Ayala's verse, the conscious effort of deliberate artistry, contrasts with those popular _romances_ which can be divined through the varnish of the sixteenth century. Few, if an...

In Spain, as in all countries where it is possible to observe the origin and the development of letters, the earliest literature bears the stamp of influences which are either e...

An almost complete record of eighteenth-century literature is supplied by Sr. D. Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto, Marqués de Valmar, in his _Histórica Crítica de la poesía castellana...

M. Morel-Fatio's _L'Espagne au 16^e et 17^e siécle_ (Heilbronn, 1878) is invaluable for this period and the succeeding century. Dr. Adam Schneider's _Spaniens Anteil an der deut...

The early editions of Góngora are named in the text; Rivadeneyra, vol. xxxii., reprints him in unsatisfactory fashion, but there is nothing better. Forty-nine inedited pieces by...

The _Leloaren Cantua_ and _Altobiskar Cantua_ are given, with English renderings, in Mr. Wentworth Webster's admirable _Basque Legends_ (1879); an exposure of the _Altobiskar_ h...

Hernando del Castillo's _Cancionero General_ should be read in the fine edition (1882) published by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles; the _Cancionero de burlas_ in Luis de...

Henceforward the task of the bibliographer is lighter; for, though Cervantes, Lope, and later writers are the subjects of an enormous mass of literature, and are reprinted in ed...

The Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle's edition of Lope de Rueda (1894) lacks an introduction, but it is in other respects as good as possible. D. Ángel Lasso de la Vega y Arguë...

The Comte de Puymaigre's _La Cour littéraire de Don Juan II._ (1873) is an excellent general view of the subject. D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori's _Don Enrique de Villena_ (1896) is...

Most of the writers referred to in this chapter are included in Rivadeneyra, vols. li. and lvii. A valuable article on Berceo by D. Francisco Fernández y González, now Dean of t...

The _Misterio de los Reyes Magos_ is most accessible in Amador de los Ríos' _Historia_, vol. iii. pp. 658-60, and in K. A. Martin Hartmann's dissertation, _Ueber das altspanisch...

Most of the poems mentioned are printed in Rivadeneyra, vol. lvii. _Solomon's Rhymed Proverbs_ are included by Antonio Paz y Melia in _Opúsculos literarios de los siglos XIV.-XV...

privately printed at Seville (1892) by D. Joaquín Hazañas y la Rua. Antonio Pérez and Ginés Pérez de Hita are to be read in Rivadeneyra, vols. xiii. and iii.: Mariana fills vols...