For six centuries before the advent of the Arabs in Spain the
country was under the Roman yoke, and had adopted the language
and arts of the Romans; but in the eighth century the overthrow
of the Romans, the coming of the Arabs, and contact with Arabian
civilization--as well as the struggle against their Moorish
invaders--began to develop in the Spaniards a spirit that was the
foundation of their national literature. No other people have
ever possessed in so strong a degree the true national feeling-
-no other has produced such a uniformly pure, deeply religious,
and elevated tone, in poetry and literature. Their poetry
remained at all times free from any foreign influence, and is
entirely romantic, while the Christian chivalric poetry of the
Middle Ages remained with them longer than with any other nation,
and received from their hands a more finished and elegant polish.
After the Moorish conquest the Spaniards withdrew to the
mountains of Asturias; they took with them a corrupted form of
the Latin language, as they had received it from the Romans;
reaching these mountains, they found themselves thrown with the
Iberians (the earliest of the Spanish races). These people had
remained half barbaric, had resisted both Romans and Goths, and
retained their original or Basque language. Coming now in contact
with them, the Christian Spaniards learned their language. Later
they met with another tribe of their own race who had remained
with the Arabians, known as the Mocarabes, a people of superior
refinement and civilization. Hence a new dialect from these
contending elements was gradually formed, and became known, like
the other languages of southern Europe, as the Romanic. The
distinguishing feature of Spanish literature, from its birth, to
the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, is religious faith and
knightly loyalty. Qualities which sustained the whole nation in
its struggle against the infidel Moors.
The first great Spanish work is the poem of the Cid. It is the
only epic Spain has ever produced, and is the most ancient of any
in the Romance language. It is also valuable as a faithful
picture of the manners and characters of the eleventh century.
Indeed, the chief characteristic of Spanish song and poetry is
its delineation of the national life. It is said that the Cid is
the foremost poem produced in Europe from the thousand years that
marked the decline of Greek and Roman civilization, to the
appearance of the Divine Comedy. The Count Lucanor, a work of the
fourteenth century, was one of the earliest prose writings in the
Spanish tongue, as the Decameron, which was written about the
same time, was the first in Italian. Both are narrative tales;
but their moral tone is very dissimilar--the Decameron was
written to amuse, while the Count Lucanor is addressed to a grave
and serious nation. These stories have frequently been
dramatized, and one of them gave Shakespeare the outline of his
Taming of the Shrew.
Alfonso the Wise, in the thirteenth century, was the author of a
legislative code known as Las Sieta Partides, or the Seven Parts.
It forms the Spanish common law, and has been the foundation of
Spanish Jurisprudence ever since; and being used also in the
colonies of Spain, it has, since the Louisiana Purchase, become
in some cases the law in our own country.
Juan Ruiz, who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
wrote a poem, partly fiction and partly allegorical, called the
Battle of Don Carnival, which strongly resembles Chaucer; both
poets found their material in northern French verse.
Santob, a Jew in the fourteenth century, wrote a poem called the
Dance of Death, which became a favourite subject with both
painters and poets for several succeeding ages.
The literature of Spain may be divided into four classes--the old
Ballads, the Chronicles, the Romances of Chivalry, and the Drama.
The most interesting of the old ballads are historical; but there
are also ballads that have to do with private life wherein appear
the effusions of love, the shafts of satire, the descriptions of
pastoral life, and the oddities of burlesque. One and all,
however, faithfully represent Spanish life. No such popular
poetry is found in any other language. The English and Scotch
ballads belong to a more barbarous state of society, and their
verse is less dignified and lofty than that of the Spaniards, who
were uplifted by a deep religious sense, and an unswerving
loyalty to their sovereign. A state of feeling that elevated them
far above the men and events of border feuds, and the wars of
rival Barons.
The great Spanish heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpo, and
Pelayo, are to this day a vital part of the belief and poetry of
the lower classes in Spain, and are revered as they were hundreds
of years ago. The wandering Mulateers still sing of Guarinos and
of the defeat at Roncesvalles as they did when Don Quixote heard
them on his way to Toboso; and the street showmen in Seville
rehearse to this day the same wonderful adventures that the Don
saw in the Inn at Montesinos. The Chronicles developed among the
more refined and educated classes. The most celebrated is the
Chronicle of Spain, written by Alfonso the Wise. It starts with
the creation of the world, and ends with the death of Alfonso's
father, St. Ferdinand. It contains all the time-honored
traditions of the country, as well as exact historical truth. The
story of the Cid is supposed to be taken from this work.
From the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles V
(or from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth), Spain was
flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of
Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the
eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the
efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey
has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths.
Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their
roots deep down in the hearts of the people; and their romance,
their chivalry, their antique traditions, and their varied
legends, form a rich deposit from which all the nations of Europe
have drawn material for their own literature. It was not until
the fourteenth century that the romances of chivalry--known in
France two centuries earlier in the stories of Arthur and the
Round Table, and the deeds of Charlemagne--found their way across
the Pyrenees.
Spain, so essentially the land of knighthood, welcomed them
eagerly, and speedily produced a number of like romances which
were translated into French and became famous. The most
celebrated is Amadis, written by de Lobeira, a Portuguese. Its
sole purpose is to set forth the type of a perfect knight, sans
peur et sans reproche. Amadis is an imaginative character; but he
is the first of a long line of doers of knightly deeds,
culminating in Don Quixote, whose adventures have charmed and
delighted the Spaniards, as well as the men of other nations.
Provencal literature began to have an influence on the Spanish in
1113, after the crown of Provence had been transferred from Arles
to Barcelona by the marriage of the then Provencal heiress to
Beranger, Count of Barcelona. This introduction of the Provencal
literature into northeastern Spain had a beneficial result on the
two literatures, fusing them into a more vigorous spirit.
Spain had always maintained the closest relations with the See of
Rome, and numerous Spanish students were educated at the Italian
Universities, hence the Italian literature had some influence on
the Spanish, more lasting as a whole than the effects of
Provencal literature. From 1407 to 1454 King John II tried to
form an Italian school in Spain, gathering around him a poetical
court. This Italian influence extended into the sixteenth
century. Diego de Mendoza, during the reign of Charles V wrote a
clever satirical prose work called Lazarillo de Tormes, which
became the foundation of a class of fiction of which Gil Blas, by
Le Sage, is the best known and most celebrated example.
Except for the Cid, Spain had no historical narrative poems of
any account, and her prose historical works, especially on the
discovery and conquest of America, are of a purely local
character, and had no influence outside of Spain. The beginning
of the eighteenth century saw the accession to the throne of
Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV; and this brought a strong
French influence into the country, which for a time dominated the
national literature.
A new poetical system founded on Boileau was introduced by Luzan
in his Art of Poetry; but it did not seem to bring about any real
advance in literature; and it was not until Spain threw off this
foreign yoke, that any revival in her literature took place. It
is due to a monk, Benito Feyjoo, in the middle of the eighteen
century that a renaissance in Spanish literature took place.
Feyjoo, a devout Catholic, labored to bring to light scientific
truths, and to show how they harmonized with the true Catholic
spirit. In the same century Isla, a Jesuit, undertook with entire
success, to purify the Spanish pulpit, which had become lowered
both in style and tone. His history of Friar Gerund, which
slightly resembles Don Quixote, aimed a blow at bombastic
oratory, causing it soon to die out. Proverbs which Cervantes had
styled "short sentences drawn from long experience," have always
been a distinctive Spanish product, and can be traced back to the
earliest ages of the country. No fewer than 24,000 have been
collected, and many more circulate among the lower classes which
have not been recorded in writing.
