17th to 19th Century Literary Movements in Europe
Romanticism
Romanticism was a cultural, literary, and artistic movement that took place in Europe during the first half of the 19th century. The general characteristics of Romanticism are:
- Individualism and subjectivism: The ideals and aspirations of the “I” are central to the life and works of the Romantic artist.
- Freedom: Manifested in opposition to any rule, particularly neoclassical rules.
- Nationalism: Valued customs, culture, language, and popular traditions of each country.
The most important aspects are:
- Feelings: These are the fundamental issue; the most repeated feelings are sadness, loneliness, melancholy, despair, and rebellion.
- Evasion: The default is bound to magnify freedom and the characters that symbolize opposition to the established order. The escape from reality, resulting from dissatisfaction with the world, leads the Romantic writer to travel to exotic, distant, and unknown worlds.
- Nature and landscape: Dominated by sad and gloomy landscapes, or those that best express the author’s tormented soul.
Realism and Naturalism
The second half of the 19th century is the era of Realism, a literary movement that triumphed in Europe by 1850 and intended, as its main objective, to accurately reflect contemporary realities. The term “Realism” in art and literature is used to describe works that try to imitate or copy reality. The fundamental genre of Realism is the novel. It contained a variety of scenarios and portrayed many characters, whose conflicts with society are often the center of the argument. Naturalism is a special form of Realism that emerged in France in the last decades of the century. It was created by novelist Emile Zola. Imagination and feeling, which were essential characteristics of Romanticism, were replaced by observation and objective description.
Benito Perez Galdos
Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1843. In 1862, he went to study law in Madrid, where he lived the rest of his life. In his last years, he struggled economically, lost his sight, and his ideological foes prevented him from receiving the Nobel Prize. He died in Madrid in 1920. He divided his novels into two groups: the novels of the first period and contemporary Spanish novels. Among the novels of the first period are the novels of argument, in which he defended his progressive political positions and fought against intransigence and religious fanaticism.
Baroque
The 17th century, the century of the Baroque, was generally a time of crisis and decline. Differences between different social strata increased. The living conditions of farmers and artisans worsened. Continuous wars, disease, hunger, and a general crisis led to a skeptical, distrustful, and pessimistic attitude. The pessimism and disillusionment of the Baroque mentality manifested in the obsession with the shortness of life and the passage of time. In literature, this is manifested in the constant presence of topics like death, feelings of love lived in a heartbreaking way, and the deceptive appearance of things. To express the distance from reality, writers relied on exaggeration. The artist and writer of the Baroque looked for originality and did not submit to models or rules.
In the 17th century, Baroque poetry had two tendencies:
- Mainstream: Includes letrillas, villancicos, and glosses of the lyrical songs and traditional Castilian romances that mimic the style and themes of tradition.
- Educated lyric: Two trends stand out: Conceptualism and Culteranismo. They try to surprise the reader. Culteranismo and Conceptualism have the same objective: to achieve beauty and surprise.