20th Century Valencian Novel and Theater: A Literary History
20th Century Valencian Novel
Early 20th Century Narrative in Valencia
Top of the narrative in Valencia was a new genre, widely read popular short narratives, colloquial, naturalist, or romantic.
The Narrative of Early 20th Century Valencia
Eduardo Lopez-Chavarri, a remarkable musician and journalist; Salvador Guinot, Canyissades. Later, Angel Sanchez Gozalbo (Bolangera demons) and Josep Pascual Tirado (Tombatossals; From my Garbera).
Valencia’s Narrative in the 1930s
Creating short novels (“Our novel”) did not improve the situation. We find an urban theme, psychological analysis of characters, and other features of modern fiction.
Ernest Martinez Ferrando Jesus directed the Archive of the Crown of Aragon. After a first volume of stories, suggesting the distant, Three stories and other prose and cruel… a single novel, a woman stops en route.
Traditional Novels
After the Civil War, recovery was slow and fraught with difficulties. Authors published nine novels that would become outdated with respect to contemporary aesthetics, and traditional narrative models were maintained.
Features:
- Isolation under external narrative models.
- Rigid traditional narrative genres.
- Extension of 19th-century realism.
- Melodramatic or sentimental style.
- Attempts to write Catholic novels or novels of social intent.
Enric Valor
Enric Valor, novelist and grammarian, authored magnificent recreations of popular Valencian tales, The ambition of Alejo and, later, Without the promised land, exploring the idea of emigration. Valor’s narrative work represents a great saga in 20th-century novels.
His sensitivity to description kept alive his youthful experiences with the destruction of a social class—rural landowners in southern Valencia—in a narrative of realism and nostalgia for a lost world, questioning the uncontaminated landscape and the unity of Valencian monolingualism.
María Beneyto
Few writers of her generation wrote poetry and fiction in both Catalan and Spanish. As a writer, she depicted people living in the world and created strong female characters in her novels.
Strong Woman is a novel of female protagonists.
Martí Domínguez
One of the most active and popular authors in the 1950s. He was a councilor of Culture for the Municipality of Valencia and director of the daily newspaper Las Provincias de Valencia. He published books of short stories and plays.
Valencian Novelists of the 1970s
In the early 1970s, Valencian novel production—”A unique grace,” as John Carpenter revealed—changed radically in 1974. Two very different novels gave rise to two aesthetic tendencies:
- Approach to assay failures crazy fire made by Amadeus Fabregat, a novel of change.
- The Fire Ox by John F. Look, a realist novel.
Novels of Change
Novels of change applied textual and code violation, opposing ideological forces. Novelists attempted to engage the reader in a literary discourse that might lack argument. They sought to subvert standard narratives on subjects opposed to the dominant value system: criticizing Franco’s regime, demanding freedom, claiming dissidence, breaking values in a coercive society, and exalting marginalization, youth, and sexual freedom—in short, modernity.
Novels of Change:
- Trial of approach to failures crazy made fire by Amadeus Fabregat
- Ramona Rosbij by Isa Trolec
- Neck of snakes by Ferdinand Burns
- Area of a ritual by Josep Lluis Segui
The Evolution of Realism
These novels told stories comprehensible to the ordinary reader, using more intelligible language. The novel’s structure involved the juxtaposition of simple chapters, avoiding more complex textual organization.
This trend began with The bull of fire by John F. Watch. Major novels include: The silkworm; Matter of British Comedy by Carmelina Sanchez-Cutillas and Return by Josep Piera.
Genre Fiction
New social and political factors led Valencian novelists to adopt a more open narrative conception in the 1980s, resulting in novels by genre.
Historical Novel
Crime and The Brotherhood by Joseph Lozano and Regina Pobla peccadrius the woman established the historical novel in Valencian literature.
Thriller
Developed in the United States during the war and transformed into spy novels during the Cold War, the thriller followed the post-World War II novel of strict police intrigue.
Ferran Torrent incorporated the thriller into contemporary Valencian novels: Upload gloves, Butxana, a black with a sax, and King Horse, Year of the sausage.
20th Century Valencian Theater
Survival of Comedy Sketches
Valencian 20th-century theater followed the dramatic model of Escalante. A conservative scenic attitude and the continuity of entrepreneurs, authors, actors, and audiences remained the only formula for success: “experience.”
Most theaters presented works in Spanish, sometimes also in Valencian, mainly directed at the popular classes. The lower-class public, true to the language, understood and enjoyed the colloquial Valencian as a kind of “dialect theater.”
First Attempts at Renovation
Early 20th-century attempts to overcome the anachronistic theatrical model were influenced by comedy sketches.
A New Theater for a New Public
Around 1930, the so-called “white-shirt workers” demanded a different kind of theater in Valencia. Coinciding with the transformation of Valencia in the 1930s, attempts were made to modernize the scene. Valencian letters, bringing together members of the Generation of 1930, proposed the permanent abandonment of comedy sketches.
Theater in Valencia During the Second Republic and the Civil War
Public theater began to move into cinemas. Actors’ unions and employers gave up the exploitation of theaters. Intense politicization is noted in the arguments of works such as:
- Lenin; Scenes of the Russian Revolution by Josep Bolea
- Oppressor and oppressed by Francisco Almela y Vives
Contemporary Theater
In the postwar period, the public sought works of evasion. Censorship authorized the first theater of evasion in Valencia. Theater worshiped Spanish.
Modernization of Valencian Theater
Factors:
- Representative amateur companies:
- The Ateneo Mercantil
- Lo Rat Penat
- The Ausias March Classroom, University of Valencia
- Theatrical activists with a clear vision.
- A new generation of playwrights with literary and cultural training.
70 Years of Independent Theater
Many groups staged progressive and critical works. For the first time, the concept of multi-stage areas, working with body language and standard language (not dialect), created an alternative circuit in commercial cinemas.
– Rodolf Sirera: Encouraged the main scenic projects in Valencia.
– Manuel Molina: Created melodramas and historical comedies.