Spanish Golden Age

A period of flourishing Spanish literature, visual art, and imperial power, usually dated from the late 15th through the 17th century.

Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes’s novel follows an aging reader of chivalric romances who sets out as a knight-errant. Its 1605 and 1615 parts became the era’s most internationally influential novel.
Reconquista: The centuries-long process by which Christian kingdoms expanded across the Iberian Peninsula at the expense of Muslim states. Its completion in 1492 preceded the monarchy and imperial expansion associated with the era.
Miguel de Cervantes: A Spanish writer best known for Don Quixote and regarded as a major figure in Western literature. His fiction transformed the possibilities of the novel during the period.
Spanish Armada: The Spanish fleet sent to invade England in 1588, defeated and dispersed during its campaign. Its failure became a marker of the limits of Spanish military power at the era’s height.
Spanish language: A Romance language that developed from spoken Latin and is now spoken across much of the world. The empire’s expansion helped establish Spanish across the Americas and beyond.
Spanish Golden Age theatre: A dramatic tradition that flourished in Spain during the late 16th and 17th centuries. Public playhouses made drama one of the period’s most popular literary forms.
Catholic Monarchs: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, whose marriage joined their dynastic rule. Their reign consolidated royal authority and sponsored the 1492 voyage of Columbus.
Lope de Vega: A prolific Spanish playwright and poet who helped shape the comedia nueva. His dramatic innovations and output made him a defining voice of Golden Age theatre.
Thirty Years' War: A series of conflicts in central Europe from 1618 to 1648 involving major European powers. Its costs and outcomes exposed the pressures on Spain’s European empire.
Potosí: A Bolivian city whose silver mines became one of the largest sources of wealth for the Spanish Empire. Its silver linked imperial power to global trade and the economic pressures of the period.

Linked from 27 pages