Mass Media and Literature: From 19th Century to Today
Mass Media
- Radio: A means of communication that is fast and cheap, and principally uses the spoken word to inform, entertain, and educate.
- Television: The most influential medium of communication due to its ability to unite image and word.
- Newspaper: Aims to transmit real, objective, and current information, using the written word and images.
- Internet: Has it all.
Nineteenth Century
Realism stems from the Guide and Cervantes, and continues in the novel of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, works sought to reflect with total accuracy both the environments and the characters, as well as their inner world.
Foreign Literature
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (France): A woman’s life, unfulfilled and dreamy, whom adultery drags to ruin and suicide.
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (England): A complaint about the hardships of orphaned and destitute children.
- Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (Russia): A deep analysis of the corroded soul of a young man, full of remorse because of an absurd crime.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (U.S.): A story of a gang of children’s mischief.
Spanish Literature
- Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós: Portrait of a man surrounded by extraordinary women: his insubstantial wife and his lover.
- La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas Clarín: Chronicle of the destruction of a woman by her confessor, her lover, and the surrounding society.
- Pepita Jiménez by Juan Valera: Analysis of the inner struggle of a seminarian who ends up leaving the priestly career for a young woman.
Twentieth Century
The novel is characterized by the transformation that its elements undergo: action, figures, narrator, time, and space. New genres also appeared.
Foreign Literature
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Czech Republic): A picture of the loneliness of a man who wakes up transformed into a huge insect.
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (France): An attempt to recapture the past through memory.
- Ulysses by James Joyce (Ireland): A modern odyssey in which heroism has become mediocre.
In the Spanish Language
- The Tree of Knowledge by Pío Baroja: The attempts of a young man, who ends up committing suicide, to make sense of his life.
- The Hive by Camilo José Cela: A pessimistic vision of post-war Madrid society.
The American novel acquired special relevance in the twentieth century. Its maximum exponent is:
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia).
Flaubert -> France -> Madame Bovary
Clarín -> Spain -> La Regenta
Mark Twain -> United States (U.S.) -> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Dickens -> England -> Oliver Twist
Dostoyevsky -> Russia -> Crime and Punishment
Galdós -> Spain -> Fortunata and Jacinta
Valera -> Spain -> Pepita Jiménez
Varieties of Language
A language has multiple variants that can be grouped into two types: geographical varieties and social varieties.
Geographical Variants
Language: It is a reliable communication system used by a verbal community, with characteristics that differentiate it from other oral variants. Dialects are present in different regions where a language is spoken.
In Spain, four languages are used: Castilian throughout the country, and Catalan, Galician, and Basque in some regions. Much of the population is bilingual because they speak two languages.
Languages of Spain
Castilian and its Dialects
Castilian is a Romance language that is spoken throughout Spain and Latin America. The major Spanish dialects are Canary, Andalusian, Extremaduran, and Murcian.
- Loss of consonant at the end of a word
- Loss of /d/ between vowels
- Aspiration of /s/ and /z/ at the end of a syllable
- Confusion of /r/ and /l/ at the end of a syllable
- Yeísmo, or replacement of /ll/ with /y/
Andalusian: The dialect of Castilian with the highest number of speakers and social prestige.
- Ceceo (pronunciation of /z/ for /s/) or seseo (the reverse)
- Relaxed /ch/
Spanish in America
Spanish in America refers to the different varieties of the Spanish language spoken in Hispanic countries.
Judeo-Spanish
Judeo-Spanish is the dialect spoken by descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the peninsula (Sepharad) in the fifteenth century.
Catalan
Catalan is a Romance language spoken in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. Its main dialects are Valencian, Majorcan, and Alicante.
- In the Middle Ages: Ramon Llull and Ausiàs March.
- In the nineteenth century: Poet Jacint Verdaguer.
- In the twentieth century: Poet Salvador Espriu.
Galician
Galician is a Romance language spoken in Galicia and some neighboring areas.
- In the Middle Ages, a lot of peninsular lyric poetry was written in Galician.
- Highlights: In the nineteenth century, poet Rosalía de Castro, and in the twentieth century, poet Celso Emilio Ferreiro.
Basque or Euskera
Basque is a pre-Roman language spoken in the Basque Country and part of Navarre.
New Narrative Genres
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, narrative genres that had been cultivated in the past resurfaced, such as adventure and fantastic stories. Other new stories appeared, such as police, science fiction, and terror.
Adventure Stories
- Sea: Moby Dick by the North American Herman Melville, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ by Joseph Conrad, both Englishmen.
- Jungle: Tarzan by the American Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Jungle Book by the Englishman Rudyard Kipling, and Tales of the Jungle by the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga.
- Exotic or Imaginary Places: Journey to the Center of the Earth by the Frenchman Jules Verne, and Sandokan by the Italian Emilio Salgari, which takes place in Southeast Asia.
- The American West: The Last of the Mohicans by the American James Fenimore Cooper.
Fantastic Stories
- The German Ernst Theodor Hoffmann wrote The Devil’s Elixir, the Englishman Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, and the Italian Carlo Collodi wrote Pinocchio.
- The Frenchman Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince, the German Michael Ende wrote The Neverending Story, and the Englishman J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings.
Tales of Terror
- Spirits: Deceased persons appear in places inhabited by the living: Another Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
- Living Dead: Dracula by Bram Stoker.
- Monsters: People with physical or mental deformities: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
- Doubles: Beings that acquire the form of beasts or human appearance: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson.
Detective Stories
In England: Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes; Gilbert Keith Chesterton, whose investigator is the priest Father Brown; and Agatha Christie, with detectives Hercule Poirot and the ancient and good-natured Miss Marple. In France, Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret.
In Spain: Francisco García Pavón created Plinio, a guard in Tomelloso, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán created Pepe Carvalho, a skeptical detective and delicious gourmet.
In the U.S.: The genre drifted into the so-called crime novel, with its pessimistic picture of society. One of its greatest exponents is Raymond Chandler, with his detective Philip Marlowe.
Science Fiction
Science fiction is based on scientific advances to narrate adventures that occur in the future or outside our planet.