The reading of Arnold Hauser´s work, in particular his book Der Manierismus, written in 1964, that deals with Spanish literature, allows us to overcome the usual classifications found in manuals of this area based only on chronological data. Hauser calls "Mannerism" the crisis of the Renaissance, distinguishing it from European Baroque movements. Some of the Spanish authors and their works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respond to the characteristics of Mannerism, if one takes into account their perspectivism, the presence of paradox, their cerebral construction, the discovery of the modern reader, their autonomy as literary works, the overcoming of the classical genders, the use of dialog, etc, and can, therefore, be seen as the basis of the literary Modernity.
Arnold Hauser; Mannerism; Spanish Literature; Modernity