20th-Century Spanish Literature: Generation of ’27 and Narrative Trends

Posted on Oct 3, 2024 in Latin

Generation of ’27

Characteristics:

  • Birthdates around 1900
  • Key figures: Ortega y Gasset and Juan Ramón Jiménez
  • Extensive literary training and close friendships
  • Shared themes and anthologies
  • Similar aesthetic tastes, diverse literary influences
  • Interest in popular culture
  • Poetic renewal: metaphor, free verse, avant-garde influence
  • Themes: Cities (New York, Moscow), nature, love, and the passage of time

Stages:

  • Initial (until 1929): Popular and traditional poetry, influence of pure poetry
  • Pre-Civil War: Surrealist influence, use of imagery and metaphors
  • Post-Civil War: Disappearance of the generation (exile or death)

Federico García Lorca

Themes:

  • Death, love, and frustration leading to tragedy

Stages:

  • First Stage (1921-1928): Modernist and popular influences, use of metaphors.
    • Book of Poems: Cheerful and childlike
    • Songs: Influence of pure poetry
    • Poem of the Cante Jondo: Themes of death and love, verses filled with pain and anguish
    • Gypsy Ballads: Focus on the marginalized, struggle against death
  • Second Stage (Years in New York):
    • Poet in New York: Change in style, urban imagery, expressive language
    • Divan of Tamarit: Traditional metrics
    • Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías: Elegy dedicated to his dead friend
    • Sonnets of Dark Love: Unfinished poem about love

Style:

  • Fusion of cultured and popular elements
  • Symbolism of the moon and blood

New Narrative Models of the 20th Century

1940s Novel

  • Nationalist Novel: Ideological vision of the Falange, exaltation of militarism
  • Fantasy, humor, and imaginary worlds
  • Traditional Realism: Bourgeois life, values, and behaviors
  • Existential Novel: Reveals the country’s malaise, themes of loneliness and frustration.
    • The Family of Pascual Duarte (Cela): Written in prison, a life of misery and death
    • Nada (Laforet): About reality, isolated protagonists

1950s Novel

  • Reflects the prevailing situation in Spain
  • Seeks to transform society
  • Two trends:
    • Neorealism: Individual experiences, solitude
    • Social Novel: Political instrument

1960s Novel

  • Focus on formal renewal and experimentation
  • Features:
    • Open endings
    • Unclear protagonists
    • Interior monologue
    • Multiple points of view
    • Minor characters gain importance
    • Rejection of collective characters
    • Rupture of temporal linearity
    • Free direct speech
    • Rich language
    • Importance of visuality
  • Authors: Delibes (“Five Hours with Mario”), Marsé (“Last Evenings with Teresa”), Santos (“Time of Silence”)

1970s Novel

  • Coexistence of different trends and styles
  • Interest in history, linguistic variety, and thematic diversity
  • Latin American Boom: Renewal of narrative, influenced by exiled writers

Gabriel García Márquez

  • Known for short stories and novels
  • Mixes real and imaginary, myth and history
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude: Story of the Buendía family, six generations, cyclical time, recurring events
  • Nobel Prize in Literature (1982)

20th-Century Lyric Trends

1940s Poetry

  • Two trends:
    • Rooted Poetry: Evasive, uncommitted, classical style, themes of love and God
    • Uprooted Poetry: Deeper meaning of human existence, focus on suffering

1950s Poetry

  • Poetry as social tool
  • Themes: Situation in Spain, freedom, pessimistic tone, simple language
  • Blas de Otero: Three stages: existential poetry, social poetry, new forms of expression
  • Gabriel Celaya: Iberian Songs

1960s Poetry

  • Focus on human condition
  • Varied styles, precise language
  • José Hierro: Desolation, frustrated search for happiness
  • Claudio Rodríguez

1970s Poetry

  • “Novísimos” poets
  • Rejection of social realism, diverse influences, refined style, cultural content, metapoetry

1980s Poetry

  • Trends: Poetry of experience, poetry of silence, neosurrealism, long verse, new epic, classical poetry, neoeroticism

Latin American Poetry

  • Modernism as a rejection of positivism

Pablo Neruda

  • Prolific poet
  • Stages:
    • Modernist Poetry: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
    • Surrealist Period: Residence on Earth (themes of death and destruction)
    • Committed Poetry: Third Residence
    • Final Works: Themes of solitude, the sea, and death