Modernism in Spanish Literature
Argumentative and Expository Texts
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Characteristics of Modernism
Modernism developed in Hispanic areas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Key features include:
- Parnassianism: Focused on beauty and formal perfection.
- Symbolism: Used symbols to suggest a deeper reality.
Modernists renewed literary language by:
- Using refined vocabulary and words chosen for their sound and evocative qualities.
- Emphasizing musicality through rhythmic devices.
- Reviving classical verse forms and using free verse.
- Favoring meters like hendecasyllable, alexandrine, and dodecasyllable.
Key Figures of Modernism
Rubén Darío
Darío pursued literary innovation by breaking with previous aesthetics.
- Azul: Combines verse and prose, including poems and short stories, with vivid imagery.
- Prosas Profanas: Known for metrical and verbal innovations, featuring exotic and aristocratic themes, social issues, and eroticism.
- Cantos de Vida y Esperanza: Explores philosophical concerns like time, aging, and existence, and reaffirms Hispanic culture, advocating for unity against imperialism.
Antonio Machado
Machado was a prominent poet whose work evolved from Modernism to a more intimate style.
- Soledades, Galerías y Otros Poemas: Explores existential angst through decadent landscapes and introspective dialogues.
- Campos de Castilla: Addresses social and political issues related to the Castilian landscape, people, and history, also including poems on personal loss and philosophical reflections.
Miguel de Unamuno
: The production includes essays, novels, poetry and dramatic works, genres that he used to reflect his philosophical ideas. He criticized the Spanish situation and proposed to model it out of Europe for social backwardness. Turned to personal preoccupations, as the meaning of life, religious beliefs, the survival after death …-Tries: expressed his ideas about Spain and turned his philosophical reflections: the conflict between reason and faith, immortality …- Novels: embody the obsessions of the author. In these works dominate the action is sparse dialogues and monologues. Faced with criticism that his novels could not be considered as such, call Nivola.
Pio Baroja: His novels incorporate philosophical concerns that reflect their idea of existence: a tough struggle for survival in a hostile world. Its fundamental themes are the recreation of the hostile world and analysis of how to deal with it. Social critic, man of action oo who leaves the world have lost faith in change. In these novels stands the author’s ability to capture locations and environments plasticity and vividness and naturalness of the dialogue. Works: The House of Aizgorri, Mayorazgo Zalacaín Labraz and adventurer [Earth Basque]. The lady wandering the city in the mist and the tree of knowledge [the race]. The search, Aurora Weed and red. [The Struggle for Life]
Ramón M ª. del Valle-Inclan: a poet and novelist and a great playwright. It began in modernism, a period in which they excel the sonatas, a cycle of four novels lyrics that present a world in decay. They are featuring the Marquis de Bradomín. In his nonsensical reality shows deformity: animalizes reified and the characters, who become human condition: personified animals and objects, binds ek kenguaje lyrical expression to the foul … All this to denounce the social and political reality of Spain. Key plays: – Divine words: drama set in rural Galicia, full of inhuman characters, collected by lust and avarice. – Luces de bohemia: Considered the first ugly man, portrays the last night of life Maz Star, who, accompanied by Don Latino Híspalis, runs through the different environments in Madrid and ends up dying in the doorway of his home, abandoned and betrayed by his guide.