20th Century Spanish Theater: From Benavente to Lorca
Bourgeois and Realistic Theater
This genre, popular among the middle and upper bourgeoisie, focuses on social mores in urban settings. Jacinto Benavente, a playwright known for his technical skill, initially faced poor reception with plays like The Alien Nest, a story of jealousy. He later adapted to popular tastes, becoming a chronicler of high society with works like The Unloved, Lady Loves Saturday Night, Autumn Roses, and The Vested Interests.
Verse Theater
This form of 19th-century Romantic drama often features historical themes, idealizing and mythologizing medieval Spain and the Spanish Empire. Key playwrights include Eduardo Marquina (In Flanders, the Sun Has Set, The Daughters of the Cid), Francisco Villaespesa (The Castle of Pearls, Aben Humeya).
Comedic Theater
Carlos Arniches’s comedy of manners features humble characters and witty dialogues, often recreating the speech of Madrid. His works, such as The Saint of Isidro and The Friend Melquiades, blend humor with a tragic undercurrent, reminiscent of Goya. Other notable works include The Chiefs, Is My Man, and Mademoiselle de Trévelez.
The Álvarez Quintero Brothers
Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero presented a romanticized vision of Andalusia in works like The Grill, Fans and Tambourines, The Yard, Cain, Loves and Loves, and Malvaloca.
Pedro Muñoz Seca
While lacking literary merit, Muñoz Seca’s Don Mendo’s Revenge remains popular for its absurd situations and comedic ease.
The Generation of ’98
Miguel de Unamuno
Unamuno explored profound philosophical and symbolic themes, often featuring characters grappling with existential questions. His works include The Band, Raquel Chained, The Other, The Sphinx, and Phaedra.
Azorín
Azorín’s work, such as The Invisible trilogy (The Spider in the Mirror, The Reaper, and Doctor Death, 3 a.m.), deviated from realistic conventions but was not well-received.
Valle-Inclán
Considered a summit of 20th-century European theater, Valle-Inclán’s originality is evident in his dramatic approaches and language. His works range from decadent and grotesque to the Savage Comedies trilogy (Eagle Blazon, Romance of Wolves, and Face Plate), set in a mythical Galicia driven by primal instincts. Divinas Palabras also explores this mythical, irrational world. Valle-Inclán’s farces ridicule characters and situations, while his esperpentos, like Bohemian Lights, grotesquely distort reality to reflect Spain’s political and cultural degradation. Other esperpentos include the Mardi Gras trilogy (The Horns of Don Friolera, The Deceased Galas, and The Captain’s Daughter).
The Generation of ’27
Pedro Salinas
Salinas’s poetic theater, often in one-act plays, explores themes of love and the alienation of man. His works include Judith and the Tyrant and The Director.
Rafael Alberti
Alberti’s work includes political theater (Fermín Galán, From One Moment to Another, Night of War in the Prado Museum) and poetic theater (The Monstrosity).
Federico García Lorca
: Knowledge of the theatrical genre. Intention that his plays were to all social classes. Create university theater La Barraca. It combines verse and prose. It is expressed in a code of symbols. Musical elements. Atmosphere of great lyrical intensity. Topics: impossibility of the realization of love, the imposition of social conventions, the fatalism of the characters (doomed to a tragic death), frustration. The protagonist is a woman .- farce: The Curse of the butterfly, Tragicomedy of Don Cristobal and Rosita Sena, The Shoemaker’s Prodigious. Works of fullness: Mariana Pineda, modernist work, written in verse. It has a hymn to freedom and love. Bodas de sangre alternating prose and verse, and emphasizes the tragic fate of men. Yerma symbol of sterility, is haunted by the desire for motherhood. “Dona Rosita single or language flowers fighting actually leads to failure. The House of Bernarda Alba dramatic testament of the author. After the death of her second husband, Bernarda stays with her five daughters. Maternal authoritarianism. Pepe el Romano is married with one daughter, and makes nightly visits to the other. It ends with the suicide of Adela, the youngest sister.
Two plays avant-garde: the public and the years pass.
ITEM 15 – The Generation of Generation 27Características: Union with previous literature through: traditional folk poetry (songbooks and Romance). The classics of the Renaissance and the Golden Age (Gongora). Becquer. Ruben Dario. Juan Ramón Jiménez. The avant-garde. Influence Gomez Ortega y Gasset and the Generation Serna.Trayectoria: – From 1920 to 1927: echo Becquer.Features of the stage: the ideal of formal perfection, intensive use of metaphor, eagerness to explore new possibilities of language, use of traditional lines and stanzas .- From 1927 to 1939: poetic shift (called rehumanization). From 1927, the poets left in their compositions language and traditional poetic forms, incorporating free verse. Existential issues, political and social .- The postwar exile. There are only Aleixandre, Gerardo Diego and Damaso Alonso. Dramatic and somber tone. Return to the poetic forms tradicionales.Pedro Salinas: relentless pursuit of knowledge. Main theme: love .- First stage: includes Omens, Seguro azar (a fusion of traditional and avant-garde), Fable and sign. Omens is the uncertain fate of man, frustration and what is behind the reality of the fable goes to sign. The fable is the transformation of beings in mind. Beings, transformed, mean, become signs. – Stage II: The voice you due, Reason, Love, Long sorry. World intimate and love. Conceptual language and reflective. Influence of Garcilaso (Title proper voice to you comes from a Eclogue). The work is conceived as a single, long poem. The center of the loving couple is the woman. Salinas is in love is born, falls apart and is reborn, the possibility of giving meaning to life love humana.En ratio continues the theme of separation of lovers. Now the poet is alone and meditate or dream. Largo regret is an epic poem about the indifference and the death of love .- Third stage: The set (mysticism, refers to the sea). All clearer and Other Poems (horrors of the Civil War and World War). Last book: Trust. Jorge Guillén: optimistic and calm the universe. Cultured and reflective, with an unwavering positive attitude of hope. Language developed. Accuracy and conceptual density. Clarity of expression. .- Hendecasyllable and short poetic career: is included under the heading Air ours. Books: Song, Clamor (Maremagnum … That will give the sea, To rise to the occasion), Keep, And Other Poems, Final.Aire ours is based on a set of symmetries and dialectical relationship. Double issue: being in the world and the human being in relationship with him. Canticle is the best-known book of Guillen. The poet attends to the basics and gives us a fascinating picture of salvation and life. Clamor is the complement and opposite Song. Guillen is immersed in the historical origins of our time. Denunciation of this. Homage is a tribute to writers. His work delves into ethics. In the gift of life, love, friendship, culture and poesía.Rafael Alberti variety of records. Variety in language, style, tone, poetic forms and the topics it covers. Alternate language and the popular worship, Elton serious and melancholic. It addresses issues of his native Andalusia with intimate and political exile and art. His political background is in the Spanish lyric. Tradition and modernity come together in his work .- First stage (neopopularista): Marinero en tierra, La amante, Dawn of dust, Marinero en tierra (autobiográfico. Nostalgia. Be removed from the natural paradise) .- Phase (Vanguard): influence of Góngora, futurism and surrealism. A moment of personal crisis and aesthetics, a new approach. Cal y canto, on the angels, Sermons and purple. – Stage (civil poetry) political commitment to communism. Aesthetic values relegated to the background. Propaganda. With the shoes I have to die, From one moment to another poet on the street.– Fourth stage (exile): Buenos Aires and Rome. Return to your roots originate. Topics: childhood, the sea, Cadiz, Andalusia and Spain. Among the carnation and the sword, High Tide, Return of the living distant sea Ora, Baladas y canciones del Parana. Damaso Alonso: his concept of poetry has a transcendent motivation or metaphysical .- First stage (pure poetry): influence of Machado and Juan Ramon. Poemas puros. Poemillas of the city, The Wind and verse. – Second stage (existential poetry): Hijos de la ira, Dark story, Man and God. Children of wrath: a book that responds to the devastating effects of the Civil War and which was a poetic revelation in the panorama of the Spanish lyric. Be construed as an anguished cry, an angry protest and a wave of revolt against the absurdity and inhumanity. The voice of the poet turns to God for an answer to the meaning of life and the reasons for the existential chaos. Language realistic and surreal. Surge poetry desarraigada.Gerardo Diego: two parallel styles and permanent (avant-garde and traditional) .- Vanguard: Image. Poetry, Manual foams, Fable of Equis and Zeta. – Traditional: his themes are love, memories and personal history, music and spiritual yearning to transcend. Soria, Soria succeeded, Love alone, Violante sonnets, love poetry , My Santander, my cradle, my word, Lark truth, Cross, Angeles de Compostela, Verses divine human Verses. The quality of his work lies in the quality and variety. Absolute control of language and poetic forms.
Federico G ª Lorca, folk poetry and learned .- Time of youth: love without hope, doomed to sadness, rhetorical and sentimental tone. Impressions and Landscapes, book of poems. – Age of plenty: the themes are death, time and morality. It uses the song and romance. Poema del Cante Jondo, first song, Songs, Gypsy Ballads (composed of 18 romances. Based on the topics of the Gypsy and Andalusian. As the title suggests, the protagonist is a Gypsy, which symbolizes pure and innocent man, socially excluded and at odds with the laws of social and moral conventions to use, represented by the Civil Guard on behalf of Spanish society. Raise the gypsy to the rank of literary myth. stylized language of great expressive concision. Influence expressionism and surrealism. Words with symbolic value.) Poet in New York (up their protests against a brutal society, dehumanized and indifferent to man. Modern civilization and nature are incompatible. surrealist images to express the anguish and communication anxiety) Divan of Tamarit (inspired by the Arabo-Andalusian poetry) Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (Elegy). Vicente Aleixandre: poetry as a form of transcendent expression. Form of expression of mystery, poetry is communication between men .- First epoch (cosmic and symbolic style, fully surreal): is the drive and the elemental world, love and death. Scope, Passion of the land, Espadas como labios, destruction or love alone World, Shadow of paradise, birth last. – Second period (historical or realistic style): books that recreate the previous topics, from a perspective of solidarity with the particular man time. History of heart, In a vast domain, named Portraits, Poems of the consummation, Dialogues of knowledge. Literatura.Luis Nobel Cernuda: Romantic poet, is the opposition between reality and desire. The major theme of his work is the opposition between the artist’s inner world and the contingent world. The nature of the term makes it impossible to love, time, degrades and destroys it. Rebellion is useless, the fullness of being unattainable. Une Romanticism and Surrealism .- First stage (pure poetry)Perfil del aire, Eclogue. Elegy. Oda. – Second stage (surreal): love is the subject of four books. Want to live it fully, but admits her ambivalence and ephemeral condition, as is threatened by the ravages of time. Vitalísimo language, full of images. A river, a love, Forbidden Pleasures, Donde habite el olvido, Invocations .- Third stage (exile): pessimism and feelings of rootlessness, alienation and loneliness. Past topics and adds nostalgia, childhood and Spain (love-hate relationship). Language content, close to record tone conversational and meditative poems that poured into forms and resumes where classical meters. Como quien espera el alba, Vivir sin estar viviendo, with the hours counted, Desolation of the Chimera.