Modernist and 98 Generation Novels
Metamorphosis of the Modernist Novel
This stage is characterized by a crisis of realism and a constant search for new paths, affecting mainly the plot, themes, structure, and techniques.
The Plot and Action
- Action is downplayed.
- The action is interrupted by digressions or lengthy descriptions.
- The plot doesn’t meet the 3 parts (exposition, rising action, and denouement) and is presented as a fragment, without beginning or end.
- Open endings are common.
- Themes, in addition to universal ones (loneliness, death, love…), emerge from psychological, moral, and social inquiries.
Structure
- The division into chapters and parts continues, but new divisions appear in fragments or sequences of highly variable length (external structure).
- Film greatly influenced the internal structure (scenes are connected without requiring time-space continuum).
Narrator
- Besides the omniscient narrator, many innovative formulations appear in 3rd person: internal narrator, protagonist, subjective (and therefore unreliable).
- External narrator, oblivious to the facts, with a serious or ironic tone.
- Intrusive narrator, speaking with characters from outside the story (metafiction).
Characters, Space, and Time
- Characters tend to be cerebral and sensitive individuals, often appearing blurred or abstract, as only their psychological aspects are referenced. Interior monologue is used.
- Time and space become subjective (due to the subjective narrator). Space is limited to a site, and time is manipulated by timing jitter (timelessness).
Modernist Novel and the Generation of 98
The 20th century begins with four major novels in 1902: Will, Way of Perfection, Love and Pedagogy, and Autumn Sonata.
Features
- Striking subjectivism.
- Existential issues: a crisis of bourgeois values, critical failure, and the issue of Spain (Generation of 98).
- Break with the tripartite design of the plot with the intention of renewing Castilian prose.
- The style is characterized by great simplicity and sincerity with the use of traditional terms.
Azorín (José Martínez Ruiz)
Two fundamental issues are present in Azorín’s work: the passing of time and creative writing.
- The novel becomes a hybrid of narrative, essay, and prose poem. This produces rich descriptions with intense subjectivism and a lack of action.
- The style features maximum precision and conciseness, with extensive vocabulary, nominal style, and enumeration.
Work
- Three inspirational autobiographical novels (protagonist is Antonio Azorín). The most important is The Will.
- Experimental works: Doña Inés and Félix Vargas.
Valle-Inclán
In his first stage, the author cultivated an exquisite modernist prose. In the second, he flocked to colloquial expressions, idioms, and slang, producing a colloquial language.
Work
- Symbolist Cycle: completion of Spanish modernist prose, music, and prices, seeking beauty and sensory evocations. Four Sonata novels: Sonata of Spring, Sonata of Summer, Sonata of Autumn, and Sonata of Winter.
- Carlist War Trilogy: Crusaders of the Cause, The Glow of the Fires, and The Gyrs of the Old. Legendary novels on rural Galicia.
- The cycle of grotesque novels: expresses his grotesque and devastating vision of the contemporary world. Tirano Banderas and The Iberian Circle.
The Noucentista Novel
This novel is characterized by two trends: intellectualism and lyrical formalism.
Ramón Pérez de Ayala (Intellectualism)
- Autobiographical works: The Leg of the Fox and Troteras Danzaderas.
- Romance novels: Prometheus, Luz de domingo.
- Essay novels: Belarmino and Apolonio, Tiger Juan.
Gabriel Miró (Lyrical Formalism)
Characterized by an ability to capture feelings and elements of nature, turning his novels into dissections of the external world of the characters with abundant descriptions. His best novels are Our Father San Daniel and The Leper Bishop.
The Avant-Garde Prose: Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Single avant-garde prose writer who invented a new genre: the outcry. It connects two ideas or objects in unpredictable, ingenious ways, producing a comic effect, a striking image, or a germ of a philosophy.
- Works: The Incongruous Cinelandia, The Fifth of Palmyra, or The Novelist.
- He was regarded as a teacher for many young writers, including Enrique Jardiel Poncela (Love is Written Without an H), Benjamín Jarnés, and Rosa Chacel.
The Return to Realism
During the 1930s, a re-humanization and a defense of “unclean art” emerged. Thus, a neo-realist, social novel emerged, reflecting society’s problems, collecting the speech of the people, and avoiding the single protagonist.
Two major authors were César M. Arconada and Joaquín Arderíus.
Ramón J. Sender
Characterized by strong realism and narrative agility, interweaving stories: Magnet and Seven Red Sundays.
In his American exile, he wrote: Requiem for a Spanish Peasant, Crónica del alba.
Miguel de Unamuno
Basque intellectual, professor of Greek, rector of the University of Salamanca, novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright. A thinker concerned with the regeneration of Spain and man’s struggle against nonbeing and death.
Style
- Language full of ideas and emotions.
- Bare and austere style, devoid of rhetorical praise.
- Displays relations between opposites (faith-doubt, inner reality-historical reality, reason-heart, Spain-Europe), causing paradoxes, antitheses, and neologisms.
Unamuno’s Conception of the Novel
- The novel is the ideal instrument to express emotions and intuitions (reality).
- Creates “viviparous” works, playing with narrative techniques, structure, and character conception. Requires reader participation with prologues and epilogues.
- Concentrates the action and minimizes descriptions. Inner conflicts are paramount.
- Time and space appear vague.
- Dialogue and monologue are important for translating characters’ concerns and ideas.
Novelistic Work (Nivola)
- Peace in War: realistic novel with autobiographical elements.
- Love and Pedagogy: satirizes scientistic pretensions of planning human life.
- Mist: the novel of existential angst, the longing for immortality.
- Abel Sanchez: describes the subject of blind envy.
- Aunt Tula: the frustrated maternal instinct.
- How a Novel is Made: obsessions about personal identity and the struggle against death.
- Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr: martyrdom of a priest who has lost his faith.
- Don Sandalio, Chess Player: knowledge is partial and misleading.
Pío Baroja
Born in San Sebastian in 1872. Studied medicine. Quit his job to pursue writing. Worked for several newspapers. Developed remarkable political activity.
Baroja’s Thought
- Existential pessimism, distrust in man and the future. Aspiration to ataraxia (influence of Schopenhauer).
- Underneath this skepticism exists a romantic root.
Ideas about the Novel
- An open novel, free construction, with great powers of observation and invention.
- Characters are misfits who fail in their vital struggle.
- Dialogue is the substance of his fiction.
- Master of description.
Style
- Despises long phrases and empty rhetoric. Opts for terse writing, short sentences, and short paragraphs.
- Sober, clear, and direct language.
Work
- First stage: variety of themes. Characters are often biographical transcripts of the author.
- Basque Country trilogy: The House of Aizgorri, The Mayorazgo of Labraz, and Zalacaín the Adventurer.
- The Fantastic Life trilogy: Adventures, Inventions, and Mystifications of Silvestre Paradox, The Way of Perfection, and Paradox, King.
- The Struggle for Life trilogy: La busca, Mala hierba, and Aurora roja.
- The Race: The Lady Errant, The City of Mist, and The Tree of Knowledge.
- Second stage: historical background with irony.
- Memoirs of a Man of Action: twenty-two novels connected by theme, environment, and protagonist.