Modernism in Spain: A Literary Renaissance
The End of the Century Crisis
At the end of the 19th century, European consciousness faced a crisis. Scientific discoveries like Galileo’s heliocentric model, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Freud’s psychoanalysis challenged established religious beliefs. This led to a shift towards science and existentialism, a philosophical movement grounding knowledge on individual experience.
Modernism: A Response to Crisis
Modernism emerged as a reaction to this crisis. It represented a revival and a new approach to life, led by Rubén Darío. French poetry trends like Parnassianism, with its focus on aestheticism, balance, and evocative symbolism, influenced the movement.
Key Themes and Styles
Modernist literature rejected everyday life, exploring the poet’s inner world with melancholy and a desire for escape to exotic or idealized worlds. Common themes included love, sensuality, and eroticism. The style was often sensorial, using abundant sound devices, adjectives, and musical resources like alliteration, parallelism, and synesthesia.
Rubén Darío’s Influence
Darío’s work, including Azul (1888), exemplified Modernism with its rhythm, musicality, exoticism, and celebration of American roots. His influence extended to prose, drama, and other poets like Manuel Machado.
The Generation of ’98
In late 19th-century Spain, writers formed the Generation of ’98. They embraced Modernism while maintaining a critical attitude towards reality and renewing literary language. Key figures included Azorín, Unamuno, Baroja, Machado, Maeztu, and Rubén Darío. These writers, despite diverse backgrounds, shared similar ages and often gathered at the Ateneo de Madrid. They reacted to the crisis of the century and the Disaster of ’98 by breaking with 19th-century realism and embracing Modernist language.
Key Figures of the Generation of ’98
Azorín
Azorín, initially an anarchist, wrote essays and literary criticism, addressing concerns of Spanish intellectuals, particularly the concept of time and a melancholic longing for the past. His novels, like Antonio Azorín and La Voluntad, used poetic descriptions and simple language.
Miguel de Unamuno
was exiled (for the left) for his opposition to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera Literaturization work presents a constant in his life, his life experience, marked by several religious and existential crisis that made him lose faith NOVELSSan Manuel Bueno, Martyr, written after a crisis espiritual.novela full of symbolism, character and place names ITEM addresses the problem of a priest who has lost faith, despite which continues to exercise the priesthood POETRY THEME existential and religious landscape along the string of lyrical sonnets THEATER renovator in its schematic and difficult to represent reflected fedra TEST POLEMMICO and contradictory personality and interest in favorite themes Spain and the meaning of life participated in Pio Baroja bohemian and literary life, was a being optimistic and lonely, social critic and independent anticlerical STYLE fun and simple sentences and short paragraphs, dialogues creibles.describe fluids and their characters with just data, then the rate directly, away from the rhetoric and realism minociosidad WORK Trilogiasthe struggle for life TESTS Basque country race youth, ego trip’s 7 volume of his memoirs / baroja is a master of the creation of environments (which selects some element characterized) CHARACTERS critic, analyzing reality from a pessimistic perspective skeptical. Antonio Machado took influences from modern work solitudes, galleries and other poems FEATURES-first stage of the poetry of Machado-fully modernist feelings, sadness, melancholy … -romantic and symbolist influence ITEM dissatisfaction makes this long for the past and childhood stage of life yet clean and simple style varied but assonance metriccastilla fields SUBJECT his poetry evolved into more philosophical themes but presented in a form Juan de Mairena popular prose under the reflections of a gym teacher and his teacher invented martin abel, machado opinion about politics literature, philosophy … JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ is fully dedicated to poetry, his work, which gave unity selecting their poems in anthologies: there include 3 stages:-modernist influences of Becher and symbolism, struggles to find the language and words appropriate to their experience-intellectual: the music disappears and uses free verse in an attempt to capture the essence of things is an abstract poetry, debugger and intelligent-true: it is a pantheistic stage, the poet identifies with God, which he sees in nature.