18th and 19th Century Spanish Literature
Neoclassical Prose
There was little production of lyric poetry and a rise in essays and theater.
Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
With a personal tone and clear language, Feijoo covered a great variety of themes in works such as Theater Critic Universal and Erudite and Odd Letters. He defended the search for truth through reason and experience. His work reveals practical problems and defends women’s access to education and culture.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
Jovellanos’s writings covered a wide variety of themes. He was the chief political writer of his time (e.g., Report on the Agrarian Law, Public Performances and Entertainment). Jovellanos proposed linking the new ideas of modern European culture with the Spanish cultural tradition.
His essays, such as Scholars to Form the Violet, the cultural satire, and the Moroccan Letters (a set of short essays that reflect on the social and historical reality of Spain), are noteworthy. His Mournful Nights, written in prose, anticipates features of Romantic literature.
Neoclassical Theater
Throughout the eighteenth century, theater was a much-frequented form of entertainment, though it often had poor quality and an extensive repertoire of comedies.
Ramón de la Cruz
Cruz wrote more than 400 short sketches (e.g., The Comedy of Wonders, A Farce) that depict customs and types of the time. Since the last third of the century, Neoclassical writers defended a realist drama, one that was educational and based on the Aristotelian precept of the three unities: space, time, and action. They adapted Spanish subjects to tragedy. The Neoclassical theater only succeeded with the comedy of Leandro Fernández de Moratín.
Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Moratín was the most outstanding figure of the Neoclassical theater movement. He composed Neoclassical poems, among which is the Elegy to the Muses. In prose, he wrote The Defeat of Pedants (a satire on pedantry in literature and theater) and Origins of Spanish Theater (a study of theater before Lope de Vega). His Aristotelian drama follows established rules, is based on social reality and its problems, and ridicules the prejudices and errors of society. He only wrote five original plays.
The Old Man and the Girl develops the theme of women’s freedom to choose her husband. The Baron and The Prude express ideas about theater. With The Girls, he enjoyed his greatest success. In Moratín’s works, the taste and quality of human characters predominate.
Neoclassicism
During the eighteenth century, France exerted an influence by which other European countries gradually assimilated Enlightenment thinking. In France, the Enlightenment quest and the Encyclopedia used reason and repressed feeling and imagination. The essay, the epistolary novel (letters), and the philosophical novel dominated, while poetry and theater offered less interesting works.
Diderot
Rameau’s Nephew
Voltaire
Essays (e.g., Treatise on Tolerance), stories (e.g., Zadig, Candide)
Romantic Poetry
Lyric poetry had a wide range of emotional issues often reflected by the landscape (forests, ruins, cemeteries, etc.). It combined verses (polarimetry) and stanzas with great freedom. Narrative poetry featured long poems in eight-syllable verses (romance) and heroic verse (heroic romance).
José de Espronceda
Espronceda was rebellious, radical, and skeptical, an example of exalted Romanticism. His narrative poems include The Student of Salamanca and The Devil World, with lyrical snippets, including Canto a Teresa, Who Is Guilty of Death?, The Beggar, and The Song of the Pirate, compositions in which he identifies with rebels and marginalized characters.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Bécquer expressed the most genuine Romantic subjectivism. His Rhymes, collected by him in a manuscript book that he entitled The Sparrows, were published by his friends. They outline the story of a love, from the hopeful feelings of the start to the disappointment of the finish. They are grouped in series, exploring poetic expression, hopeful love, Romantic disappointment and loneliness, anguish, and the harbinger of death in the final series. Bécquer intended to suggest a sentimental affinity with the reader and move him with simple language that is concentrated and intensely emotionally expressive.
Mixed Theater
Romantic theater mixed tragic and comic elements and broke the unities of time and place. It usually located the plot in a historical environment in the past to provide a variety of Romantic settings for the conflict. The core of the dramatic conflict is the love of the characters, who embody passion, the search for the ideal, and rebellion against the hostility of social norms and destiny.
Examples include The Conspiracy of Venice by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa; Macías by Mariano José de Larra; Don Álvaro, or the Force of Destiny by the Duke of Rivas; The Troubadour by Antonio García Gutiérrez; The Lovers of Teruel by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch; and Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla.
José Zorrilla
Zorrilla’s lyric and narrative poetry includes Granada and A Good Judge, Best Witness. His dramatic work is wide and varied, including The Dagger of the Goth, Traitor, Unconfessed Martyr, and The Shoemaker and the King. Don Juan Tenorio is his most famous work. It is based on The Trickster of Seville by Tirso de Molina. Its originality lies in the arrogant and seductive protagonist who surrenders to the love of the innocent Doña Inés, repents of his scandalous life, and thus manages to save his soul.
Prose
During the Romantic period, many writers cultivated the historical novel, allowing the plot to be placed in the past and providing an escape from the trivial and monotonous present. An example is The Lord of Bembibre by Enrique Gil y Carrasco. Articles of customs tried to capture crafts and folk customs that tended to disappear with the progress of bourgeois society. This was a foretaste of the realistic novel, for its interest in reflecting social reality without distortion. Examples include Serafín Estébanez Calderón’s Scenes of Andalusia and Ramón de Mesonero Romanos’s Scenes of Madrid.
Mariano José de Larra
, Don Alvaro, or the force of destiny, the Duke of Rivas, the troubadour, by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, Los Amantes de Teruel, Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch and Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla. José Zorrilla His lyric poetry and narrative is composed, among others, Granada and A good judge, best witness. His dramatic work is wide and varied: The Dagger of the Goth, Traitor, Martyr inconfiesoand the shoemaker and rey.Don Juan Tenorio is his most famous work. It is based in The Trickster of Seville by Tirso de Molina. Its originality lies in the arrogant and seductive protagonist surrenders to the love of the innocent Dona Ines, repents of his scandalous life and thus manages to save his soul.
During PROSE many writers cultivate romantic historical novel, allowing the plot to place in the past and an escape and this trivial and monotonous. The Lord of Bembibre, Enrique Gil y Carrasco. Articles of customs tried to rates crafts and folk customs which tended to disappear with the progress of bourgeois society. It was a foretaste of the realistic novel, for his interest in reflecting social reality without distortion.Estébanez Serafin Calderon (Scenes Andalusia) and Ramon de Mesonero Romanos (Scenes matritenses). M ARIANO José de Larra The most valuable work of Larra consists of several hundred articles, a genre that allowed him to put literature in the service of criticism, progress and freedom of thought. He wrote articles on literary criticism and theater, politics and morals. Cala rightly in the moral character of society and the causes of backwardness of the country. He wrote The Day of the dead, Come back tomorrow to get married early and wrong, The Old Castilian, Is the author of Macias, and a historical novel, The youth of Prince Henry the Sufferer. He signed his articles with several aliases: El Duende satirist, Andrew Niporesas, Figaro … The irony and sarcasm are present in most of its articles.