This work examines the cultural discourses of authority and experience (in their historical, religious, and literary aspects) that emerge in the Spanish Golden Age as a result of the new world order of an expanded Christendom, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and an evolving Christian humanism. The opening and closing chapters develop a critical model based on dialogical interpretations of ideology, typology, and narratology, which is then related to Spanish Golden Age culture and discourse. The eight main chapters treat a representative selection of travels, meditations, devotional lyrics, novels, stories, prologues, philosophical dramas, and allegorical plays by such major authors as Columbus, Santa Teresa de Jesús, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, Quevedo, Calderón, and sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.