Early Modern Spanish Literature

Early Modern Spanish Literature examines the texts, theater, and cultural production of Golden Age Spain (roughly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), a period when Castilian writing flourished under the pressures of religious orthodoxy, imperial expansion, and profound social stratification. Scholars work across literary analysis, history, and visual culture to understand how writers navigated the Spanish Inquisition, the forced conversion of Muslim and Jewish communities, and the contested place of women in public and intellectual life. Active debates center on how classical models were adapted—and transformed—as Spanish culture extended into the Americas, and on how religious identity shaped what could be said, printed, and performed. Questions about whose voices survived, how converso authors encoded dissent, and how gender determined access to literary authority remain central and unresolved.

Works

131,542

Total citations

115,957

Keywords

Golden Age SpainLiteratureCultureReligious IdentityVisual ArtsInquisition