19th Century Aesthetics: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism
Romanticism:
- Characteristics: Individualism is revealed against all objects, expressing the artist’s intimacy and a subjective view of reality.
- Denial of Reality: The world imposes limits, producing romantic frustration. The reaction to reality is evasion or rebellion.
- Defense of Freedom: Freedom of thought is the basis of Romanticism, considered essential, rejecting neoclassical rules.
- Nature: The natural world acquires importance in art. Landscapes are intricate, harsh, or desolate, reflecting the author’s mood.
- Nationalism: Revitalized during Romanticism. The Romantics valued the unique features of their country.
Realism: Replaces romantic idealism with a desire to reflect social reality based on observation.
- Main Characteristics: Interest in the outside world replaces romantic intimacy.
- Realism aspires to be a social and human chronicle, collecting believable themes, characters, and environments.
Naturalism: Intensifies the principles of realism and incorporates the deterministic view of evolution and heredity.
- Characteristics: Performs a detailed documentation of reality, using the methods of experimental sciences and applied determinism.
- Reproduces sordid or unpleasant environments and features characters marked by heredity and environment.
- Naturalism represents a critical current that denounces social gaps and injustice.
19th Century Literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism
Romanticism: Romantic writers, in the name of freedom, reject neoclassical rules.
- Mixing genres, combining verse and prose, and using various types of meters and stanzas.
- The romantic style is always prevalent, sometimes melancholic, intimate, confidential, and other times epic-sounding, bombastic, or melodramatic.
Realism and Naturalism: Make literature a mirror that reflects the era.
- The quintessential literary theme is the reality surrounding the writer, shown with descriptive and psychological detail.
- The social style tends towards simplicity and incorporates colloquial language to reflect the time faithfully.
Literary Genres
Romanticism revitalizes the Lyric Theater, genres appropriate to the intimacy and vehemence of the romantic spirit. It also establishes the absolute freedom of the artist to combine or create new genres.
Realism and Naturalism produce the splendor of the narrative: the novel and, to a lesser extent, the story. Other genres are relegated to the background. Naturalism assumes the renewal of European theater, both in topics and forms of representation.
Poetry of the 19th Century
Two poetic trends are distinguished: lyricism and narrative poetry. Romantic poets rejected any norm, using polymetry, introducing new forms, and retrieving some forgotten ones. Lyrical themes revolve around feelings or great romantic ideals, often falling into nature.
Many Romantic poets include German language Schiller and Espronceda Goethe. In Spain, the Duke of Ribas, Zorrilla, and Rosalia de Castro Bécue.
Realism and Naturalism: poetry is the most neglected genre because descriptivism flows.