The tendency to fill Spanish prose with Latin isms, so strong in the preceding period, now yields to a feeling which finds a native dignity in the mother tongue. Juan de Valdes, in his Dililogo de la lengua (c.1535), initiated the scientific study of the grammatical and stylistic peculiarities of Castilian. Comparative perfee lion of form is attained in Mariana's Historic de Espana (1001, etc.). the first thoroughly good account of Castilian history based on the study of documents. In his y artr dr ingenio, Baltasar Gracifin (c.1601-58) gave the law book of that system of literary mannerisms termed coneeptism; be also got the attention of contemporaries and posterity by his aphoristic and sententious sayings of various kinds. Re ligious literature of a mystic and ascetic nature occupy an important place in the annals of the time; it is best represented by the writings of Luis de Leon, San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross), .11:1len de Chaide, Luis de Granada, and Santa Teresa de Jesus (Saint Theresa, 1505-82).
Preceding the period of activity of Cervantes, we have the continua) ion of the chivalric novel ; the pastoral novel; the narrative form as ex hibited in the Ce/cstina; and the earliest of the picaresque novels. Of the posterity of the Amndis, the unsurpassable type of the romance of chivalry, are a number of vontinnations deal ing with the adventures of Florisando, Lisuarte of Greece, Perion of Wales, Amadis of Greece, and similar heroes. hardly less a favorite than the Anuidis was an imitation of it entitled Pal meria do Oliru (1511). which in its turn was made the subject of other continuations and imi tations. The books of chivalry prepared the way for the pastoral romance, introduced into Span ish by Jorge de who founded his Diana on the Arcadia of the Italian Sannazaro. For contemporaries a good deal of the interest in the Diana and its kindred depend ed upon the personal allusions conveyed by the characters and in the dialogue. The Tracienmedia de Calisto y .1Ic1ibea (later termed the ('rIcstina) was published at Burgos in 1499, and appeared in an amplified form at Salamanca in 1500. Al though it is called a tragicomedy, it cannot in its present form have ever been capable of scenic representation, and it is certainly more a novel than a play. On account of its spirited action and of the development which the Pelestina gave to the handling of dialogue and the delineation of character, it exerted an influence upon later dramatists and novelists both. It soon provoked continuations and imitations, and a connection may even he traced out between it and the Dorotea of Lope de Vega. The realistic ten dencies evinced in the Celestina are equally pro nouneed in the first of the picaresque novels, the anonymous La:twill° de Tonnes (1554). long ascribed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. In this novel we follow the career of a rogue (piecro), who, beginning as the guide (lazarillo) of a blind beggar, deceives him, and, passing into the service of other personages representing various ranks of life, shows himself no legs ready to be guile them. There is no attempt at palliation of
the truth; it is a picture of the bald and in iquitous fact that is presented to us in the Lazarillo and its successors.
Realistic fiction of the sialo de oro culminates in the magnificent Don Quijote of Miguel Cer vantes de Saavedra (1547-1010), a novel in which the matter-of-fact philosophy of Sancho Panza stand; in sharp contrast with the grotesque ideal ism of his master. It is not improbable that Cervantes wrote the hook in order to destroy the vogue of the chivalrous romances. although it may he urged that their popularity was already on the wane and that at the most he simply gave them the coup de grOre. Don Quijote (usually Don Quixote in English) has become one of the world's imperishable hooks. The first part of it was published in 1005; the second part was hur riedly prepared for the press in 1015. in order to baffle the designs of a certain Avellaneda, who had published a spurious sequel to the novel in 1014. Cervantes had much less success in an other novel, the Pcrsiles y Sigismunda (pub lished posthumously), but that he could handle the shorter tale with skill is proved by his Yorclas rjemplarcs. Among those who cultivated the tale after the time of Cervantes were Lope de Vega„ Tirso de Molina (in his Cigarrales de Toledo, 1621), i‘lontalblin (Para todos. 1632), Maria de Zayas, SolOrzano, Salai Barbadillo, and Luis Velez de Guevara (with his famous Diablo cojuelo, 1641, the source of Lesage's Diable boiteux). Quevedo (1580-1645) was the fore most of the prose satirists of the age; in his witty and sarcastic Suerios, cart as del caballero de la tenaza, etc., he cries out against abuses with which bitter personal experience had made him acquainted.
As a literary form the drama had been prac tically unrepresented since the end of the twelfth century; but now, at the end of the fifteenth cen tury, it was to revive and receive an unsurpassed development. Juan del Encina (c.1468-1534) be gins the new• order. Encina spent some years in Baty; hence an Italian influence on his work is not improbable. The comic elements in some of the pieces may show an influence of the French farce. Disciples of Encina were Lucas Fernandez, who employs the terms larsa' and `comedia'; the Portuguese Gil Vicente; and Torres Nabarro, whose art shows considerable progress over that of the master. In his plays we meet for the first time with a division into acts. The pieces of the foregoing authors were intended for the refilled audiences of the Court; those of Diego Sanchez (c.1530-47) seem to have been meant for per formance amid more popular surroundings. Italian influence is unmistakable in the comedias of Lope de Rneda, an actor (e.1540-66), famed for his short and witty pasos or entremcses. The Latin tragedy is obviously imitated in the first really important Spanish tragedy, the Numancia of Cer vantes. Avendaiio in 1533 first adopts the divis ion into three acts instead of five. Juan de la (1550-1607), the first Spanish drama tist to deal with incidents taken from the na tional history, adopted a division into four acts.