19th-Century Theater & Realism in Literature
Romantic Drama in the 19th Century
Features
Romantic drama theaters in the 19th century underwent a remarkable transformation. Theater buildings became more pleasant and functional, allowing for technical improvements in lighting, scenery changes, and sound.
Romantic dramas broke with the Aristotelian rules of theater imposed by neoclassical dramatists, prioritizing creative freedom. Key features include:
- Rejection of traditional rules: Mixing comic and tragic genres, and using both prose and verse (though verse ultimately prevailed).
- Structure: Works were divided into three, four, or five acts.
- Historical drama: The most popular genre, often set in the Middle Ages. However, historical accuracy wasn’t the primary goal; the medieval setting served as a backdrop to explore contemporary social issues.
- Settings: Cemeteries, dungeons, abandoned places, monasteries, forests, and ruins.
- Protagonists: A heroic man and a virtuous, beautiful woman whose love is doomed. The hero often has a mysterious past, hinting at noble origins. The woman embodies physical and spiritual virtues, but her love leads to destruction.
- Themes: Doomed love, passion, social rebellion, and the pursuit of absolute freedom (political, social, or human), often hindered by fate.
- Tragic outcomes: Death is not a moral punishment but a lament against a world that doesn’t allow for the fulfillment of ideals.
Realism and Naturalism
Origins
Naturalism emerged in France around 1870, aiming to explain human behavior through scientific lenses. This led to characters with moral or physical deficiencies, emphasizing the hardships of human life.
In Spain, realism mirrored European trends, drawing on the picaresque tradition, Don Quixote, and costumbrismo. Spanish realists analyzed contemporary society. Emilia Pardo Bazán introduced Zola’s naturalist ideas, but they clashed with the religious views of many authors, limiting naturalism’s impact.
Characteristics of Realism
Realism, primarily a narrative movement, favored the short story and novel. Its main features are:
- Objective observation: Unlike romanticism’s subjectivity, realism focused on meticulous observation and analysis of reality. The goal was to create believable narratives that felt true to life.
- Contemporary settings: Writers depicted their own time and society, reflecting all social classes in recognizable spaces.
- Thesis-driven approach: Authors often conveyed an ideological viewpoint, sometimes leading to Manichaean characters (good vs. bad) and affecting plausibility.
- Psychological analysis: Characters were ordinary individuals, their behavior explained through family background, education, and past experiences. While bourgeois characters dominated, the proletariat and marginalized individuals also appeared, along with a notable frequency of female characters.
- Omniscient narrator: The narrator controlled all aspects of the story, knowing characters’ thoughts, manipulating time, and often commenting on events.
- Style: Natural, sober language, avoiding effusiveness and exaggeration. However, the narrator’s language often remained literary, contrasting with the realistic dialogue of the characters.