Moderation and the Mean in the Literature of Spain's Golden Age

Abstract

Abstract This book presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean and related ideas of moderation in the literature and thought of early modern Spain (1500–1700). It argues that the critically neglected ethical credo of moderation was an important part of the classical inheritance exploited by Golden-Age authors, as Aristotle’s familiar but contested doctrine informed a range of literary discourses in intricate and challenging ways. Analysis is divided broadly into two sections. The first focuses on the interpretation and transmission of the mean itself, outlining the reception of Aristotle’s Ethics in Spain and the early modern approach to the mean in particular. This includes detailing areas where early modern readers challenged or modified Aristotle’s account, and other intermediary sources which inform or reflect the Renaissance understanding of the mean and moderation. After study of the figures of Icarus and Phaethon, who embody one such modification to Aristotle while also providing a bridge to literary analysis, the monograph’s second section offers detailed case studies of three major writers: Garcilaso, Calderón, and Gracián. These studies show how different writers rely on different strands of the mean’s multifaceted intellectual reception. Moreover, scrutiny of these authors’ engagement with moderation and the mean suggests new answers to several long-standing disputes in Golden-Age scholarship, including Garcilaso’s treatment of tradition and the problematic genre of Eclogue 2; characterization, tragedy, and the disputed figure of the King in El médico de su honra; and the obscure moral didaxis of Gracián’s Criticón.