The Siglo de Oro
El Siglo de Oro
c. 1492–1681. Spain's 'Golden Age' is the name literary historians give to the period from La Celestina (about 1490) to the death of Calderón de la Barca in 1681: two…
What happened
Spain's 'Golden Age' is the name literary historians give to the period from La Celestina (about 1490) to the death of Calderón de la Barca in 1681: two centuries, not one, which is why some prefer 'Siglos de Oro'. The label was born in eighteenth-century criticism and fixed by German Romantic scholars. It covers the Renaissance poetry of Garcilaso and the mystics Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, the anonymous Lazarillo and the picaresque, Cervantes's Don Quixote, the comedia of Lope de Vega and Calderón, the Baroque poetry of Góngora and Quevedo, and in painting El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo. It reached across the Atlantic to Sor Juana in Mexico. Its Spanish is the base of the modern standard language, and its works are still read, staged and quoted every day.
Events along the way
- 1554: Lazarillo de Tormes is printed
- 1562: Teresa of Ávila founds San José
- January 1605: Don Quixote is published
- 1609: Lope de Vega and the comedia
- 1656: Velázquez paints Las Meninas
- March 1691: Sor Juana answers Sor Filotea
Sources
- 'Siglo de Oro': considerandos y materiales sobre la historia, sentido y pertinencia de un término (José Lara Garrido) — Universidad de Málaga, via Hispadoc
- Cronología de la vida y obra de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Apunte biobibliográfico de Lope de Vega — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV — Web Gallery of Art