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The Costumbrismo and Ideas of Juan de Zabaleta
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In many respects Juan de Zabaleta seems close to the costumbrismo of the nineteenth century: the lack of narrative elements, the detailed description, the use of conversation in the presentation of types and as part of scenes rather than for narrative purposes, the urbanity of his style, the directness of his vision. The mental atmosphere of Zabaleta, on the other hand, is completely different: the curious time-lessness of his description, contrasted with the notion of transition; his choice of subjects for their moral value, contrasted with the search for the typical and picturesque; the sense of belonging to an ordered universe where laws may be broken but never repealed, contrasted with the irony of the later period where sometimes virtue is its own punishment. The list could be endless, for we are as much contrasting different ages as individual writers.
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References
1 Juan de Zabaleta was a native of Madrid. The date of his birth has been estimated from as early as 1612 to as late as 1627. It seems probable that the earlier date is the correct one. The last record we have of him is 1667. He was the royal chronicler of Phillip IV. He has been referred to as an ecclesiastic, but doubt has been cast upon this. In addition to prose works, he was the author of a number of dramas, some in collaboration. Almost all of these plays may be found in the volumes of Comedias escogidas de los mejores ingenios de Esparto, published in Madrid from 1654 to 1678. His collected prose works have had seven editions, the first six appearing at fairly regular intervals from 1667 to 1728, and the seventh in 1854. El día de fiesta por la mañana and El día de fiesta por la tarde appeared in 1654 and 1660 respectively, in the middle of his most productive period.
2 See George Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature (New York, 1854), pp. 194-195. Angel Valbuena Prat, Historia de la literalura española, 7th ed. (Barcelona, 1964), ii, 676-680. José Manuel Blecua, Historia de la literalura española (Zaragoza, 1947), i, 226–227. James Fitzmaurice-Kelley, Literatura española, 3rd. ed. (Madrid, 1927). J. D. M. Ford, Main Currents of Spanish Literature (New York, 1919). G. T. Northup Introduction to Spanish Literature, 3rd. rev. ed. (Chicago, 1960), pp. 189-190. Angel del Río, Historia de la lileratura española (New York, 1948), i, 307.
3 Ludwig Pfandl, Historia de la literalura nacional española en la Edad de Oro (Barcelona, 1933), pp. 384-386.
4 This same originality has been noted by E. Werner in his article “Ehre und Adel nach der Auffassung des Juan de Zabaleta” in Revue Hispanique, lxxxi (1933), 261-281. We see these ideas as fairly commonly held at the time, despite the contrary evidence of popular literature.
5 This distinction, types and scenes, develops historically in nineteenth-century costumbrismo but may be applied, avant la lettre, to earlier costumbristic writers. The study of types may be compared to the French physiologies, the caractères of La Bruyère and his followers, and, on a different basis, the ‘humors’ of the Jacobean stage. A type is a generalized character sketch, whereas a scene presents some event or pastime susceptible to colorful description, involving the actions of numbers of anonymous figures. For a discussion of the two sub-genres see Margarita Ucelay da Cal, Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Mexico City, 1951), pp. 62-65.
6 George L. Doty, ed., “Juan de Zabaleta El día de fiesta por la mañana,” Romanische Forschungcn, xli (1928), 209. All subsequent citations from Zabaleta are from this edition.
7 The logic lacks conviction. Does God have to pause for thought between stanzas?
8 There are grounds for taking this somewhat impertinent observation more seriously. As the poet awakes to a new day, so Adam awakes to life in the Garden of Eden; as the poet, through a woman, misuses the gift of poetry, so Adam, tempted by Eve, misuses the gift of free will to please her.
9 As we would expect from the purpose of the books, no representatives of the clergy are included. It is notable that there is only one female on our list, and that one, la dama, is merely the feminine of the galan who precedes her and adds nothing to the moral or psychological range of types.
10 At the close of the first book Zabaleta says: “Los que gastan el dia de Fiesta, que no van senalados en estos discursos, fuera de la intencion del dia, pueden ver lo mal que hazen en los que en ellos vàn señalados. El espejo en que se puede ver vno, se pueden ver muchos” (p. 284).
11 “Juan de Zabaleta El día de fiesta por la tarde,” ed. George L. Doty, Romanische Forschungen, l (1938).
12 Various representatives of the working classes as well as representatives of women of all levels appear incidentally in both books.
13 The chapter “El cazador” is quoted by P. Juan Mir y Noguera as a model character sketch in his book Frases de los autores clásicos españoles,“ Doty, Introduction, p. 155.
14 In him as in the earlier writers, a passionate sincerity and active imagination combine to distort the appearance of reality and, in the process perhaps, give us a deeper reality.
15 j. E. Gillet, in “A Possible New Source for Molière's Tartuffe,” MLN, XL (1925), 152–154, suggests this sketch of the hypocrite as the source for Tartuffe, basing his case on the similarities of the actions of the two hypocrites. We might add to this resemblance in motive: they are both interested primarily in imposing on pious people for the sake of financial gain.
16 Note the early preoccupation of costumbristic writers with Madrid; but for Zabaleta, who was not attempting to describe a physical Spain but a Spain of the spirit, the locale of his books was incidental.
17 There is some confusion concerning the style of Zabaleta. In his moral commentary he gives some evidence of conceptismo but the descriptive passages, except for an occasional play on words, are written in an extremely plain and straightforward style.
18 One extreme of opinion is that of Northup, who in the Revue Hispanique, xxix (1913), 195–346, suggests Zabaleta as the author of the first act of Troya abrasada, giving as his reasons the following: “The act contains much gross obscenity … one may safely attribute these obscene passages to Zabaleta. One detects in them something of the satiric touch of the author of El dia de la [sic] fiesta.” Equally unflattering from a moral standpoint is the opinion of Luis Stantullano, who speaks of “una deliciosa intención humorista que nos Ueva a tener a Zabaleta por un simpático y grandísimo hipocritón,” El día de fiesta por la mañana y por la tarde en Madrid, por Juan de Zabaleta, Selección y Prólogo por Luis Santullano (México, 1940), Introduction, p. 10.