Overview of Spanish Literature

Posted on Oct 1, 2024 in Latin

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE

In the late 19th century, the French Revolution (1789) provided a new ideological and cultural policy framework in Europe.

  1. Revolt: The Romantics questioned the morality of their time and bourgeois values, with many texts devoted to marginal characters.
  2. Evasion: Confrontation with society and reality led to the flight into the past (especially the Middle Ages) and remote locations.
  3. Projection in Nature: The Romantics expressed their emotions through nature, favoring dark environments, rugged terrain, and rough seas.
  4. Nationalism: Romanticism was concerned with genuine expressions of the soul of the people, reflected in popular and traditional forms of literature. Legends and traditional stories were collected.

MODERNISM

In the late nineteenth century, an art movement known as Modernism triumphed. Modernism originated in Latin America with José Martí (Cuban poet) and Ruben Dario (Nicaragua). The publication of Azul… by Ruben Dario in 1888 is traditionally seen as the starting point of Modernism.

Key features of Modernism include:

  1. Aesthetic Literature: It prioritized beauty above all else. In poetry, rhythm and musicality were emphasized, leading to the renovation of metrical forms.
  2. Escape from Reality: Authors sought an escape from reality, often turning to the past (such as the Middle Ages or Greco-Roman mythology), luxurious and refined settings (palaces, castles), and foreign civilizations (China, Japan, India). Urban and cosmopolitan settings were also preferred.
  3. Themes: Feelings of boredom, apathy, and melancholy were commonly expressed.
  4. Symbolism: Symbolic elements were frequently used, such as the swan, which became a symbol of Modernist aesthetics.

REALISM

Realism emerged in the second half of the 19th century, replacing the sentimental exaltation and imaginative deployment of Romantic literature with observation and accurate representation of the environment. Its intention was not to evade reality or formulate unattainable ideas like Romanticism, but to portray society credibly and critically, aiming to transform and improve it through literature.

Guided by this purpose, authors found the realistic novel to be the suitable literary genre. The novel was also the preferred genre of the readership, mostly belonging to the bourgeoisie, as it represented their interests and concerns.

THE NOVENTECISMO

In the second decade of the twentieth century, a group of writers emerged characterized by their eagerness for European intellectualism and their search for pure art, free from ties with reality and sentimentality. This group is known as the Generation of 1914. The main representative of Novecentista poetry is Juan Ramón Jiménez.

GENERATION OF 27

In the 1920s, a new group of writers known as the Generation of ’27 emerged. They received this name because they met in 1927 to commemorate the tercentenary of the death of Luis de Góngora. These intellectual authors admired the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez and the ideas of Ortega y Gasset. However, the poets of ’27 were not content to imitate the model of dehumanized poetry and art; they incorporated new formal and thematic elements, blending modernism and tradition in their works. This generation includes Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, and Vicente Aleixandre, among others.

LITERATURE DURING THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP

1. The Franco Regime’s Impact

The dictatorship implemented by General Francisco Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War abruptly ended the so-called Silver Age of Spanish literature (literature of the first third of the century). The conclusion of the war initially brought a literature attempting to express horror and anguish.

In the late 1940s, the economic plight of the postwar period resulted in social literature, which dealt with collective problems such as poverty, hunger, and inequality. The improved economy in the 1960s and the exhaustion of social literature led to the search for new models. Traditional poetic tools were abandoned, and experimental novels were composed.

2. Poetry Under Franco

2.1. Uprooted and Rooted Poetry

After the Civil War, two types of poetry emerged: rooted and uprooted poetry. Rooted poetry, cultivated by writers such as Leopoldo Panero and Luis Rosales, was aligned with the Franco regime and characterized by its optimistic tone. Uprooted poetry, on the other hand, expressed a sense of anguish about life. Hijos de la ira by Dámaso Alonso and two books by Blas de Otero, Angel fiercely and Redención de la carne, intensified human consciousness. Within social poetry, Gabriel Celaya, Blas de Otero, and José Hierro stand out.

  • Blas de Otero: “I pray for peace and the word”
  • Gabriel Celaya: “Poetry is a weapon loaded with the future”
  • José Hierro: Addressed social issues in works like Tierra sin nosotros.

3. The Novel in the Franco Era

3.1. Novels of the 1940s

The publication of The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942) by Camilo José Cela marked the beginning of a new trend, tremendismo, which dealt with the crudest realities. Another important work was the novel Nada (1945) by Carmen Laforet.

3.2. The Social Novel of the 1950s

Cela’s The Hive (1951) spearheaded this movement. Features of the social novel include:

  1. Objective Narration: The narrator attempts to reflect facts objectively and reproduces dialogue realistically. An example is El Jarama (1956) by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio.
  2. Collective Protagonist: The novel does not focus on a single protagonist but on the lives of a group of characters forming a collective protagonist.
  3. Critical Descriptions: Descriptions of characters and settings portray everyday life with a critical intent.

Notable works include The Rats by Miguel Delibes, Between Curtains by Carmen Martín Gaite, and First Report by Ana María Matute.

3.3. The Experimental Novel of the 1960s

Many writers from the previous generation developed experimental novels: Five Hours with Mario by Miguel Delibes, San Camilo, 1936 by Camilo José Cela, and Saga/Fuga de J.B. by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. Other prominent authors were Juan Benet, Juan Goytisolo, and Juan Marsé.

3.4. The Emergence of the Latin American Novel

A group of writers formed the so-called Latin American Boom of the 1960s. These authors, including Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), Mario Vargas Llosa (The Time of the Hero), Ernesto Sábato (The Tunnel), and Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch), cultivated magical realism, a technique that mixes real and mythical elements.

4. Theater in the Franco Era

In the 1940s, a humorous and intellectual theater emerged, with Enrique Jardiel Poncela (Eloísa está debajo de un almendro) and Miguel Mihura (Three Top Hats) standing out.

The 1950s saw the emergence of social drama, beginning in 1949 with the premiere of Historia de una escalera by Antonio Buero Vallejo.

During the 1960s and 1970s, stage experimentation was encouraged, with greater importance given to the spectacle and audience interaction. Innovative authors like Fernando Arrabal and independent groups like Els Joglars and La Fura dels Baus emerged.

5. The Generation of ’50

In the late 1950s, following the social poetry movement, a new group of poets emerged, known as the Generation of ’50. This group included Claudio Rodríguez, Jaime Gil de Biedma, José Ángel Valente, and Ángel González.

The Novísimos: A group of poets who renovated poetic language by creating a poetry laden with aestheticism and minority cultures, including Guillermo Carnero, Félix de Azúa, and Pere Gimferrer.

BRENDA MARSHALL

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ANTONIO BUERO VALLEJO

First Stage: Buero cultivated social and existential drama, reflecting the frustration of postwar society. This stage opens with Historia de una escalera, a work that broke the inertia of the theater of the time.

Second Stage: Historical drama predominated, with plays like El sueño de la razón and Las Meninas, which raised current issues set in other historical eras.

Third Stage: The author engaged in explicit social criticism. A representative piece of this stage is La Fundación.

CAMILO JOSÉ CELA

(Iria Flavia, 1916 – Madrid, 2002) emerged as a novelist. Two of his works launched two streams of postwar fiction: The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942) inaugurated tremendismo, and The Hive (1951) gave way to the social novel of the 1950s. In the 1960s, the author joined the growing experimental novel movement. Finally, his later works recreated the myths of Galicia. In 1989, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

MIGUEL DELIBES

While also working in journalism and autobiography, Miguel Delibes (Valladolid, 1920) was, above all, a great novelist. His career spanned various currents of the postwar Spanish novel to the present: the pessimistic existential novel in La sombra del ciprés es alargada, social realism in The Rats, the experimental novel in Five Hours with Mario, the intimate novel in The Red Leaf and Woman in Gray, and the historical novel in The Heretic.

Five Hours with Mario is one of the best Spanish experimental novels. This book reproduces the monologue of a woman, Carmen, as she watches over the corpse of her husband, Mario. Through her words, Delibes portrays two very different ideologies: the conservatism and intolerance of Carmen versus the idealism and liberalism of Mario.