Modernism and Noucentisme in Spanish Literature
Modernism
Overview
Developing Hispanic-wide in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Modernism was a significant literary movement.
Influences
- Parnassianism: Pursued beauty and formal perfection.
- Symbolism: Sought to suggest true reality through symbols.
Modernists celebrated beauty in all forms, recreating beautiful places and objects, and presenting intense feelings and emotions as essential subjects. Rejecting vulgarity, they defended the aristocratic (swan). Their rejection of reality led to escapism in space and time, towards the past and exotic lands.
Renewal of Literary Language
- Incorporated cultisms and words chosen for their evocative qualities.
- Emphasized musicality through rhythmic devices like anaphora, parallelism, and alliteration.
- Revived classic stanzas with variations, and cultivated free verse. Preferred meters included hendecasyllable, dodecasyllable, and Alexandrine.
Noucentisme
Overview
Noucentisme flourished with a group of authors reaching peak brilliance around 1914 (Generation of ’14). Known for their strong intellectual foundation, these authors saw Europe as a model.
Stages
- Initial: First decade of the twentieth century.
- Maturity: By 1914.
- Coexistence with Avant-Garde: 1920s.
- Decline: From 1930.
Characteristics
Noucentisme represented a new type of intellectual:
- Ordered lives, often academics.
- Objective and rational analysis.
- Appealed to a cultured, intellectual minority.
- Open to new ideas.
Reaction Against Art
- Rejected sentimentality, preferring intellectual positions.
- Minority literature.
Expansion of Vocabulary
- Abundant use of derivation and composition.
- Incorporation of neologisms, cultisms, jargon, and slang.
- Revitalization of original word meanings and etymologies.
Noucentista Prose
The Essay (José Ortega y Gasset, 1883-1956)
Can be divided into three thematic groups:
- Philosophical, political, and sociological.
- Artistic and literary theory.
The Novel
A minority genre with two fundamental lines:
- Continuation of successful previous models (realism).
- Renewal, separating from realism and building on Modernism and the Generation of ’98.
Types of Novels
- Lyrical: (Gabriel Miró) Features: Elaborate, poetic language; minimized action; emphasis on description; focus on the evocation of objects.
- Intellectual: (Ramón Pérez de Ayala) Features: Diminished action; characters as symbols or ideas; abundant reflections; simultaneous narrative perspectives.
- Humor: (Wenceslao Fernández Flórez) Features: Realistic narrative techniques; humor as social criticism; dark, intellectual, critical humor.
- Dehumanized: (Benjamín Jarnés) Features: Highly complex, intellectual, and difficult; minimal storyline; abundant reflection and meditation; circular structure, perspectivism.
Noucentista Poetry (Juan Ramón Jiménez, 1881-1958)
Poetic Theory
Juan Ramón Jiménez dedicated his life to poetry and the pursuit of beauty. His poetry is characterized by:
- Minority, hermetic, and challenging style.
- Constant evolution and creation.
- Poetry as a threefold desire: beauty, knowledge, and eternity.
Stages of Evolution
- Sensitive (1915):
- First Poems (1903): Learning phase with romantic scenery, Becquerian sentiment, and modernist aesthetics.
- First Simplicity (1903-1907): Early symbolism influence; themes of loneliness and sadness; simple metrics, rhyme, assonance, and language.
- Modernism (1908-1915): Prevalence of adjectives, long consonant rhyme, and sensory elements.
- Intellectual (1916-1936): Radical shift with removal of modernist aesthetics; superficiality stripped away; emotional and conceptual concentration; short poems and free verse; prose poems; focus on the present; urban settings; emphasis on literary creation.
- Adequacy (since 1936): Increasingly essential, bare, and difficult poetry; concentrated symbols and challenging content; dominant theme of God.