CULTERANISMO: ORIGIN, CHARACTERISTICS, REPRESENTATIVES AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2024

The culteranismo was an aesthetic trend in the Baroque movement of the Spanish Golden Age, the complexity of the shape and structure made it very difficult to understand its contents.

This current proposed the use of pure metaphor in a flowery and enigmatic language, which hid the meanings and messages of the expressive forms typical of lyric, theater and oratory, giving priority to structure. This was what the hermetic and precious modernists called "art for art's sake".

Luis de Góndora y Argote was the main representative of culteranismo. Source: Workshop of Diego Velázquez

The resource of Latinization of language can also be perceived as a return to the writers of antiquity, a syntactic rhetoric that challenged intelligence by dismantling, through a sensory cognitive process, the poetic images of a synaesthetic and armored language subject to individual experience.

This movement emerged at the end of the 16th century and at the beginning of the 17th. It was called gongorismo due to one of its most prolific exponents, Luis de Góngora y Argote, a Spanish priest, playwright and poet whose baroque pen forged a new language, accessible only to the cultured elite of his time.

Origin

Etymologically, the word culteranismo comes from the adjectives: cult and Lutheran. Culteranismo had its origin in Baroque literature, between the 16th and 17th centuries.

Previously, the Renaissance heritage had given subsequent literary generations a set of precepts on the balance that should exist between the form and the substance of the work.

The restlessness of the human spirit began to experience the need to break the chains of formality and the demands of the literary canon. The creators felt the impulse to pursue new aesthetic proposals that unbalanced the classical balance demanded in composition during the Renaissance.

The modern notion of the literary aesthetics of the time then emerged from the hand of Luis de Góngora y Argote. The baroque gave way to a proposal that reflected on the lyric and poetic resources in an ingenious, sharp and impenetrable way.

The object of the poems was wrapped in verbal planes and structures that prioritized form over content; Finally, the Gongorian theme was seen through specular techniques that proposed poetry as a reflection of the human essence, otherness and the ideal of man from the experience of the subconscious.

characteristics

The characteristics of culteranismo gave a different vision of the poetic fact, which was assumed as an aesthetic act that responded to the canons of a precious linguistics.

There was a discretionary handling of the grammar and the object of the work as an expressive-reflective, and even idealistic exercise of the personal vision of the world, using language as a mirror of reality.

Dynamism, sensory confrontation and hyperbolization of reality were sought. There was a marked rejection of the simple language and balance of the Renaissance.

Originality and ingenuity provoked neologisms, verbal games and distortions that defied the established, putting the intelligence and rigidity of educated readers to the test. Among the main characteristics of this literary style, the following stand out:

Syntactic complexity

The order of the words breaks with the natural structure. It suggests a dependency relationship between the sentences that creates difficulty in decoding the message (hypotaxis).

Little semantic suggestion

The length of the syntax and the subordination of the words hide the idea that you want to convey. Deciphering the message requires intelligence and a complex cognitive process.

Specularity in the syntax

It is achieved through the contrast of poetic images. It is a chiaroscuro in which the interplay between resources such as synonymy and antonymy, among others, suggests the contrast between the idealistic and realistic vision of existence.

Syntax Latinization

The rupture of the grammatical order is generated through the excessive use of hyperbaton and other resources. In addition, Latinisms were used, which were not common despite the fact that in the Renaissance they were known to educated readers.

Likewise, the transpositions and linguistic atavisms of the classical constructions reinforced the cultist intention of the authors.

Use of ornamental literary devices

There is presence of flowery, contrasting, sonorous and exaggerated language. Verses loaded with daring sensory images emerge, such as metaphors, alliterations, epithets and ellipsis. Chromatic adjectives and rhythmic and sound words are also common.

Permanent evasion and allusion

There was a need to escape from the contemporary world and it was achieved through allusions to mythology and other cultures. The classical Renaissance pattern was broken and a new world was created in which the most important thing was the way of expressing reality.

Intertextuality

A direct relationship was established between texts by ancient and modern authors, and the high level of knowledge and cultured nature of the author, who reflected on the lyric and proposed drastic changes in a bold way, which shook the established norms.

Representatives and works

Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627)

He was born in Córdoba, Spain, and was the main promoter of this trend. His detractors strongly criticized him for having dared to challenge the norms established by academicism with respect to the way in which the literary creative exercise should be carried out.

He was a controversial writer in relation to the renewal of the 17th century poetic style. He aspired to create a language that would stand out from the clear and ordinary expression.

He renewed resources of the Renaissance language and incorporated twists of the Latinized language, proposing the poetic creation as a linguistic tool free of formal grammatical atavisms.

The semantic darkness in Góngora was due to its tendency to rhetoric and linguistic deconstruction, which gave its contents an enigmatic character.

The hermetic language suggested the impenetrability of the author who discussed life issues, a product of the evasion and distancing he experienced during the creative process. This is evidence of the influence of this current on the author.

Góngora was the author of a large number of sonnets, romances, décimas, letrillas and songs. Among the major poems he wrote, the following stand out:

Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea

Epic poem whose modern element consisted in the fact that it was not written to moralize. Without any didactic intention, the author narrated the love of Polyphemus, the Cyclops, for Galatea, the nymph who rejected him because of his appearance and brutality.

The description displaces the narrative expression to highlight the plastic element of the story. The author displayed a precious, bombastic technique of high cultured dimensions.

He deliberately promoted the use of phonetic resources and elaborate metaphors, which enhanced the aesthetic intention and the deification of language as a creative entity in itself.

Panegyric dedicated to the Duke of Lerma

Work whose laudatory genre rescues the poetic flattery to the ruler. With this, Góngora exalted the reputation of the baroque aristocrats.

Loneliness

It was the emblematic work of culteranismo, since its narrative slips into an intricate structure full of poetic ornaments and labyrinthine linguistic twists.

Its content revolves around the idealization of nature, which is opposed to the strident and licentious courtly environment.

Juan de Tassis Peralta, Count of Villamediana (1582-1622)

Spanish writer of Portuguese origin. His fame in life derived from his excesses, a compulsive existence and a tragic death. His poetic work was a balanced synthesis between the two dominant currents of the Baroque: culteranismo and conceptismo. His most relevant works are the following:

Phaethon's Fable

A work worthy of the culteranistas golden poets, extensive and difficult to understand, with a hermeticism typical of the style.

This work is even referential from its theme, which alludes to the mythical Ovidian work contained in La metamorfosis. It is a scholarly poem that exalts the gongorian forms, since its structure is similar to the Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681)

Calderón de la Barca was a Spanish playwright and poet; He was also part of the army and made a military career. With a refined style, the aesthetic proposal of his theatrical work was more poetic and intellectual, with a marked didactic intention that enjoyed a cultured language.

The musicality and elegance of his texts responded to the ideal of culteranista beauty, but his work was also impregnated with conceptism since he gives importance to content.

You can also appreciate the careful scenographic plastic proposal that he always elaborated. In its details, the symbolic-sensory element stood out.

The life is dream

The main theme of this work published in 1635 revolves around the fact that man has the power to shape his life freely, who is not governed by fate.

Its structure is divided into three acts. The dramatic content of this work is full of puns and other literary resources that show the complexity of the society of that time, respecting the aesthetic proposal of the Baroque.

The great theater of the world

This is an auto sacramental written in 1655 that takes place in a single act, whose central theme is life as a great theater where each individual represents a character.

The author exalted the idea of ​​the importance of doing good and presents the idea of ​​death as a social equalizer. This subject has ancient references (it was treated by Plato, Epictetus and the Stoics, among others), and Calderón rescues it as a subject of reflection framed in the religious fact.

References

1. Abreu, G. Ermilo "The syntax and literary expression" in Philological Magazines. Retrieved on April 5, 2019 from Filological Magazines: magazines-filologicas.unam.mx
2. "Gongorismo" in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved on April 5, 2019 from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: es.wikipedia.org
3. Mollfulleda, Santiago “On the opposition between culteranismo and conceptismo in Universitas Tarraconensis Revista de philología. Retrieved on April 5, 2019 from Universitas Tarraconensis Revista de philología: revistes.urv.cat
4. Borges, J. "The specular metaphor: echoes of Schopenhauerian existentialism in" The mirrors "in Scielo. Retrieved on April 5, 2019 from Scielo: scielo.conicyt.cl
5. Harlan, Crystal “Culteranismo” in About Spanish. Retrieved on April 6, 2019 from About español: aboutespanol.com
6. "The poetry of the golden century (SXVII)" in Castilian corner. Retrieved on April 6, 2019 from Rincón castellano: rinconcastellano.com
7. "The Count of Villamediana" in History of Spain and the world. Retrieved on April 6, 2019 from History of Spain and the world: historiaespanaymundo.com