20th-Century Spanish Poetry and Theater
Poetry of the 1940s
Neoclassical Poetry
Core journals included Escorial and Garcilaso.
- Luis Rosales: Much of his work was marked by religious themes. The House On
- Luis Felipe Vivanco: Nature became a transcendent value leading to religious experience. Continuing to Life
- Dionisio Ridruejo: Poetry evolved into an intimate, daily, and familial style. In the Solitude of Time
Existential Poetry
Main themes: religious crisis and the anguish of inevitable death.
- Dámaso Alonso: Children of Wrath
- Vicente Aleixandre: Shadow of Paradise
Avant-Garde Poetry
- Postismo: Imaginative poetry, rupture of logic, humor, playful language, and irrational images.
- Cántico Group: Aestheticized approach, Baroque, refinement and culture, theme of love.
- Surrealism: Influenced by Generation of ’27 poets, frustration, pain, and desolation. Camilo José Cela.
Poetry of the 1960s (Group of 50)
Knowledge of reality (individual and subjective); further artistic elaboration. Themes: individual experience and historical times; erotic love, metapoetry, religion, intertextuality.
- José Ángel Valente: Constant inquiry in language to reach poetic knowledge and self-salvation. Lazarus Poems
- Ángel González: Harsh World
- Jaime Gil de Biedma: Main themes are linked with memory and analysis of personal experiences, love, and urban spaces. Fellow Travelers
Poetry of the 1970s
Influence of Anglo-Saxon poetry and avant-garde. Features: departure from realism, careful language, unsentimental, cultural, popular myths and media, metapoetry, linguistic and stylistic experimentation, lexical richness. Second step: return to feelings and personal experiences.
Theater of the Absurd
Born in 1920 with the publication of Bohemian Lights. Expressionism is the culmination of Ramón del Valle-Inclán. The grotesque is used to describe an art that distorts reality, exaggerating grotesque and absurd features, while degrading literary values.
Procedures for achieving esperpento: deformation of reality, degradation of characters, use of contrasts (especially between the painful and grotesque), use of irony and satire, bitter and ironic humor, rich and varied language, literarization, dialogue, and stage directions.
Antonio Buero Vallejo
His theater sought modern Spanish tragedy. Characters evoke compassion. Works are a synthesis of realism and symbolism. Contemplative characters are contrasted with active characters. Problems acquire a universal dimension. Employs the phenomenon of immersion, incorporating the viewer into the protagonist’s inner world.
- Story of a Staircase: Set on the steps of a tenement building, it depicts the lives of characters unable to overcome poverty. The staircase is the real protagonist, witnessing the passage of time.
- In the Burning Darkness: Raises the struggle for truth and freedom. Blindness symbolizes human limitations, and the need to see represents the aspiration to the impossible.
- The Sleep of Reason: Historical drama set in Madrid in 1823, during the persecution of liberals. Addresses the struggle for freedom and individual irreducibility.
- The Foundation: Set in a comfortable room that becomes a cell for political prisoners. Explores themes of torture, political persecution, and the struggle between truth and falsehood.
- Last dramas (Music Nearby and Random Traps): Introduce themes of corruption, hypocrisy of art criticism, and bad conscience, underlying individual suffering.
Theater of Humor
Postwar theater flourished away from immediate reality.
- Enrique Jardiel Poncela: Theater incorporates the improbable with elements of madness and mystery. Four Hearts with Brake and Reverse Gear
- Miguel Mihura: Dramatic production idealizes life through humanization of characters and the triumph of goodness and tenderness. Three Top Hats
Theater in Exile
Developed especially in Mexico and Argentina. Included cutting-edge developments.
- Rafael Alberti: The Eyesore
- Max Aub: The Prodigious Suspect
- Alejandro Casona: The Lady of the Dawn