History of Spanish Literature

XVIII

LITERATURE UNDER FERDINAND
AND ISABELLA

TURNING our backs upon the political doings of the
Catholic Sovereigns, upon war and the Inquisition,
we return to those achievements of their reign that
cost no sorrow at the time and have stirred hundreds
of thousands of readers since then with deep, agree­
able, and sometimes noble emotions. Perhaps I do
the course of Spanish literature a little violence, but
I look upon it as a series of periods:
XII Century Poema del Cid
XIII " Alfonso el Sabio
XIV " Juan Ruiz


Juan II The Portico
XV "

Jorge Manrique
Los Reyes Católicos Amadis of Gaul
La Celestina

In the reign of Juan II we passed through the
portico to the literary Renaissance in Spain; and now
in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella we enter the
first garden, court, or chapter, of the great period
of Spanish literature, El Siglo de Oro, the Golden
Age. This preliminary period is spoken of as the
early Renaissance. It might be called the Age of
Printing, since the first book printed in Spain was in
the year of Queen Isabella's accession ( 1474).

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Publication Information: Book Title: Spain: A Short History of Its Politics, Literature, and Art from Earliest Times to the Present. Contributors: Henry Dwight Sedgwick - author. Publisher: Little, Brown. Place of Publication: Boston. Publication Year: 1926. Page