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Classicism was a scientific, artistic, and cultural movement that occurred in Europe during the Renaissance period (from the 15th century onwards). The name of the movement that marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, refers to classical Greco-Roman models. The term is used to describe the works of Ancient Greece and Rome or the works that were later inspired by them.
The cultural horizon of the Renaissance was Classical Antiquity. Ancient Greece is considered the cradle of Western thought that directly influenced the culture of the Romans. The return to classical forms was the aesthetic purpose of the Renaissance.
Classicism has its genesis in Italy, in the 15th century, with the emergence of humanist thought. The Middle Ages began in 476 AD with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ended in 1453 AD with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. Some historians, however, consider 1492 to be the year of the arrival of the Spanish in America.
The Renaissance occurred between the 14th and 16th centuries, in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, in which cultural, artistic, scientific, and political development and the change in European thought were organized, based on the resumption of classical knowledge, developed, and spread by Greeks and Romans.
Historical context
Classicism occurred in the 16th century and emerged in Italy along with the Renaissance movement. In Portuguese literature, it begins with the arrival of the Portuguese writer Francisco Sá de Miranda in Portugal, in 1537. Sá de Miranda returned from Italy bringing with him new models sonnets, which were introduced into literature. The sonnet is a fixed poetic form, formed by two quartets (four-line stanzas) and two tercets (three-line stanzas).
Francesco de Sanctis (1817-1883), Italian literary critic, intellectual, writer, historian, philosopher and politician, generally considered the most important specialist in the Italian language of the 19th century, named with the Tuscan expression Dolce stil nuovo (Sweet new style), a group of Italian poets from the second half of the 13th century, made up of Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia, Guianni Alfani and Dino Frescobaldi.
The Middle Ages, a period that lasted ten centuries (5th to 15th), was dominated by religion, whose motto was the dogmas and precepts of the Catholic Church. People who were against or questioned these dogmas were excommunicated, in addition to suffering banishment from society, or in the last resort, death.
Humanism, which emerged from the 15th century, began to question several themes based on the scientism that was emerging in Europe. Many scholars proposed new ways of analyzing the world and life, beyond the divine and anchored in anthropocentrism.
The West was leaving behind the medieval social, political, and philosophical order, marked by religion and the Church's control over the feudal system. This rupture was called the Renaissance, in the sense that classical Western culture was reborn. Later, in the French Enlightenment, whose great symbol was the French Revolution of 1789, the monarchy was deposed, and the first republican government was founded.
The French Republic enshrined universal human rights under the motto of freedom, equality, and fraternity. The Enlightenment reflected the transfer of faith, as the supreme value of humanity, to reason. And it was crucial to oppose the Greco-Roman tradition to the Christian one.
While wealth in the Middle Ages was related to land ownership and tradition, the commercial exchanges that were established with mercantilism transformed money into the major source of power. Exchange with civilizations in Asia and Africa, especially with people of Arab origin, opened new horizons for Europeans with the development of mathematics and navigation instruments, such as the astrolabe. Geographical spaces, during the Great Navigations, opened with the discovery of other sea routes that led to the territories of the great American continent.
All of this was possible thanks to the Renaissance. Evading the ideological censorship of the Church, thinkers and scientists developed new theories and inventions: Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model of the Universe, Galileo Galilei discovered the laws that govern the fall of bodies, Johann Gutenberg invented movable types to print books, a task previously delegated to copyist monks.
It all started in ancient Greece
Ancient Classicism, both as a style of art and as the first theory of art, was defined by the ancient Greeks, imitated by the Romans, and continued to appear in various forms throughout the centuries.
Historically, the classical periods are:
The 5th and 4th centuries BC, in Greece, with writers such as Aristotle and Sophocles;
The first century BC and the first century AD, in Rome, with writers such as Cicero and Virgil;
In French drama of the late 17th century;
In the 18th century, especially in France, during the Enlightenment, with writers like Voltaire and Condorcet.
The superiority of balance and rationality over impulse and emotion is affirmed by Classicism. It aspires to formal precision, declares order, and avoids ambiguity, flights of imagination or lack of resolution. It also confirms the importance of totality and unity as the work of art is coherent without extraneous elements or open conclusions.
Both ancient Greek and ancient Roman writers emphasized restraint and narrow aim, reason reflected in theme and structure, and a unity of purpose and outline. In his Poetics, Aristotle emphasized the unities of time, place, and action. Perhaps basing his theory of drama on the plays of Sophocles, He also stated that the action of a place must occur within 24 hours, with all events occurring in one location, and each event causing the next.
Following these restrictions would produce a pleasingly cohesive drama. The ancients believed that art was a vehicle for communicating the reason and intelligence that permeate the world and human affairs when people act rationally and according to moral precepts.
Classicism in literature
Literary Classicism began during Humanism in Europe, a time that glorified reason and intellectualism. In the 16th century, there was the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics (4th century BC) by Giorgio Valla, Francesco Robortello, Ludovico Castelvetro, and other Italian humanists.
Also called Renaissance literature, Classicism consciously imitated the forms and themes of classical antiquity, especially its mythological tradition. In it, there was a loss of importance of Christian religious imagery, whose theme focused on classical epic feats and the representation of the feelings and concerns of Humanism.
The main assumption was that ancient authors had already achieved perfection. Thus, the basic task of the modern author was to imitate them: the imitation of nature and the imitation of the ancients were the same thing.
Dramatic works, for example, were inspired by Greek experts such as Aeschylus and Sophocles. They sought to embody the three Aristotelian unities: a single plot, a unique location, and a compressed time span. On the other hand, in addition to Aristotle's theory of poetry and his classification of genres, the principles of the Roman poet Horace dominated the classicist view of literature.
The authors of literary Classicism followed their aesthetic principles and critical precepts from the Greco-Roman period. They were guided by Aristotle's Poetics, Horace's Poetic Art, and Longinus's on the Sublime, reproducing the Greco-Roman forms: epic, eclogue, elegy, ode, satire, tragedy, and comedy.
Characteristics of Classicism
The language of classicism is classical, formal, objective, balanced and rational. The authors prioritized cultured language and aesthetic rigor. It was contemporary with Mannerism, and later with Baroque and Rococo, and remained the dominant trend throughout the 19th century. Its key features are:
֎ Appreciation of the ideals of Antiquity and Greco-Roman mythology. Use of literary theory in Aristotle's Poetics. Compressed time. New interest in writing epics. Notion of the Greek ideal of beauty, also guided by proportion and balance of forms. Adoption of textual forms from Classical Antiquity, dramaturgy and the genres of tragedy and comedy, and poetry, in the lyrical and epic genres.
֎ Focuses on poetry and prose over romance. Textual genres do not mix. Lyrical poetry has its own method and characteristics that should not be confused with those of epic poetry, or dramaturgy.
֎ Formal rigor. Each form used in the classic text must follow its own set of rules. Well-ordered structures. Accurate and believable content. Search for balance, proportion, objectivity, and transparency. Mimetic work as a reflection of a nature that follows universal laws, the work as a harmonic concert. Decorum, that is, the style must be adapted to the theme.
֎ Containment of subjectivity, of the impulses of interiority. What counts is the work, not what the author feels or thinks. He must disappear before the work. Value rationality as opposed to sentimentality and the universal over the specific. Valuing common sense and clarity;
֎ Anthropocentrism, the centrality of human existence in relation to the Universe and what makes it up;
֎ Humanism. Work as a conveyor of truths and teachings that allow the human soul to be perfected;
֎ Universalism, rationalism, and scientism.
Prose in Classicism
The concept of prose literature is post-antiquity, so there is no explicit classicist tradition in fiction that corresponds to those of drama and poetry. However, since the first novels appeared at a time when classical literature was held in high esteem, novelists consciously adopted many of its characteristics.
Among them they considered Aristotle's insistence on moral courage, Greek playwrights' use of divine intervention, and epic poetry's focus on the hero's journey.
Classicism in Portugal
In Portugal, Classicism comprises the literary period of the 16th century (between 1537 and 1580). Although Classicism took hold in Italy in the mid-13th century, it was only in 1527, with Francisco Sá de Miranda, that the movement began in Portugal. Influenced by the dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style), which he had learned in Italy, Sá de Miranda introduced to literature the genre of the decasyllable sonnet, which would become known as the “new measure”, as opposed to the “old measure” (five or seven metric syllables).
The theme of Neoplatonism was predominant in Portuguese Classicism, a philosophical school that assumed Plato's love philosophy, treating love not from sensuality, but from its philosophical and religious bias. Furthermore, the poets of the period valued above all the great national achievements, the achievements of the Portuguese people, the subject of epic poetry. It can be understood, therefore, that Classicism in Portugal focused on two main themes: love and bravery.
Camões, the most important poet in the Portuguese language
The birthplace of Luís Vaz de Camões (1524/1525-1580) is uncertain: probably Lisbon, probably in 1524 or 1525, but the cities of Coimbra, Santarém and Alenquer also claim to be the place where the poet was born. Of noble origin, he had a solid education and in-depth knowledge of history, geography, and literature.
He started the Theology course at the University of Coimbra, which he abandoned due to leading a life incompatible with religious precepts. A conqueror, Camões had many passions, and his verses were highly regarded by the ladies of the court. He engaged in duels and made enemies, which led him to enlist and embark, as a soldier, for Ceuta, where he fought against the Moors and lost his right eye in combat.
Once free, he embarked for India in 1554 and lived in Macau. He saved himself from a shipwreck in 1556, taking with him the originals of his most famous work, the epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiadas)
Camões is considered the most important Portuguese-language poet and one of the greatest in universal literature. His literary production is multiple and includes both erudite and popular forms, of songs inspired by old medieval songs. His work can be divided into two main axes: lyric and epic poetry.
The lyrics of Camões are composed of love themes, heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, which coexists with sensual themes, always establishing a contradiction. The antitheses of presence-absence, spiritual love-carnal love, life-death, dream-reality are very present in his poems, which makes him an anticipator of the Mannerist movement.
He composed in the so-called “old measure,” linked to popular tradition, and in the “new measure,” the decasyllable poem, the preferred form for exposing complex themes and feelings.
O Lusíadas, the mythical journey of Vasco da Gama
Camões was well known for his sonnets, but his greatest work was Os Lusíadas (1572), an epic poem of a nationalist nature that exalts the period of the Great Portuguese Navigations. Inspired by Virgílio and Homer by form and theme, Camões also uses Greco-Roman mythology to weave the epic: Bacchus would have turned against the Portuguese, for being the owner of Indian territories, and Venus, for liking the Lusitanian people, would be in your favor. Thus, Vasco da Gama's real journey is mixed with this mythological narrative.
Written in ten songs with eight stanzas each, Os Lusíadas is a work of cultured and elevated language, in keeping with the characteristics of epic poetry. It heroically sings of the Portuguese kings and nobles following the conquest of new territories, also adding other glorious episodes in the history of Portugal. However, it was after Luís de Camões, one of the greatest Portuguese poets and in world literature, that Portuguese literature gained notoriety.
Classicism in Portugal remained until 1580. This is the year of Camões' death and of the Union of Iberian Crowns, an alliance established until 1640 between Spain and Portugal. In Brazil, this literary period became known as Quinhentismo (XVI century – 1500 to 1600).
Main European authors and their works
Spain
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) with his most notable work Don Quixote (1605).
Portugal
Francisco de Sá de Miranda (Coimbra, 1481 – Amares, 1558) - precursor of Portuguese Classicism, was responsible for introducing decasyllable verse in Portugal. He had some poems published in Cancioneiro Geral (1516), an anthological compilation of humanist poetry. He also introduced, in the Portuguese language, the forms of the sextina song and the productions in triplets and octaves, being responsible for the training of Portuguese poets, having a profound influence on the Literature that developed in the period. Moral, philosophical, and political reflection, in addition to loving lyricism, were part of his themes. He also wrote dramaturgical texts and letters in verse form.
Bernardim Ribeiro (1482-1552) - with his novel Menina e Moça (““Girl and Young Woman”, 1554). António Ferreira (1528-1569), with his tragedy A Castro (1587).
In America, authors such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were influenced by Classicism. Works like Common Sense are good American examples.
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