Spanish Literary Movements: Modernism to Post-War

Posted on Nov 19, 2024 in Latin

Modernism

Artistic movement of the late 20th century entering Spain from Latin America. Renewed poetic language and restored beauty in art.

Modern Poetry

Beauty is the main objective of Modernism.

  • Metric: Pursuing musicality and rhythm, verse of ten syllables and Alexandrine verse, acute rhyme is used.
  • Style: High and refined.
  • Topics:
    • Sensuality
    • Exoticism
    • Universalism
    • Inwardness and melancholy

Generation of 98

Group of authors of the same age who suffered the disaster of 1898. These authors proposed solutions to overcome the crisis.

  • Topics:
    • Appreciation of past literature
    • Study of history to seek the essence of the country
    • Description of the Castilian landscape
    • Existentialism: the meaning of life and death
  • Style:
    • Simple vocabulary with significant power
    • Anti-rhetorical style
    • Lack of resources and sobriety

Lyric

  • Predominant content over form
  • Simplicity:
    • Sober vocabulary
    • Lexicon conveys authenticity and poverty of Spain
  • Decay:
    • Issues related to the country’s crisis
    • Author criticizes Spanish decline

Fiction

  • Style: Simple and traditional taste for words
  • Topics:
    • Concern about the situation in Spain
    • Evoking the past and description of the Castilian plateau

Generation of 27

Spain’s most important literary group at the beginning of the twentieth century, composed of poets with common features:

  • Attraction to avant-garde movements
  • Appreciation of literary translation, both cultured and popular
  • Desire for originality, innovation, and poetic renewal
  • Purity of art, search for perfection
  • Presence of surreal and dreamlike elements
  • Supremacy of metaphor

Topics

  • Death: sometimes accepted, other times poet expresses sorrow
  • Love: traditional poetry (educated or popular) and avant-garde innovations
  • Spanish landscape
  • Social concerns

Style

  • Pure poetry, losing obsession with forms and focusing on human problems
  • Using popular measure with influence of the Golden Age
  • Poetic language with prevailing metaphors and images
  • Innovative metric

Traditional Theatre

Technical Characteristics:

  • Comic or dramatic themes
  • Purpose was to entertain the public
  • Two types:
    • Bourgeois comedy: Social satires, minor
    • Theatre of manners: Picturesque and comic portrayal of a region and its popular class

Innovative Theatre

  • Anti-bourgeois character and poetic lyricism
  • Topics: Great human issues
  • Characters:
    • Moving dramatic component
    • Protagonists are women frustrated by inability to achieve desires
  • Style:
    • Formal simplicity
    • Plasticity
    • Rural vocabulary
    • Use of metaphors and symbols
  • Lyricism: Great lyrical load in dialogue, universal dramas

Post-War

  • Isolation stage (1939-1950):
    • Autarky to poverty
    • Strong repression of fear
  • Breaking of the blockade (1951-1959):
    • Alliance with the U.S. in the Cold War
    • Technocrats in the government
    • Incipient economic recovery
    • Industrialization
  • Opening period (1960-1975):
    • Foreign investments
    • Tourism development
    • Emigration of Spanish workers to European countries
    • Cultural openness and customs
    • Rejection of the dictatorship
  • Cultural aspect:
    • Breaking with the innovation tradition of 20-30 years: Death or exile of leading intellectuals
    • Censorship: affects political, social, and moral aspects

Lyric

  • Existential Lyric (1940s): Discusses feelings affecting people of the era: angst, despair, God…
    • Rooted Poetry:
      • Topics: Love, family, God, country
      • Style: Characterized by classic, traditional metrics
    • Uprooted Poetry:
      • Topics: Anxiety, misery, hunger
      • Style: Content matters more than form, appearance of free verse, internal rhythm in the poem, simple language, metaphors, and striking images that make suffering clear
      • Authors: Dámaso Alonso (Children of Wrath)
  • Social Poetry (1950s):
    • Unhappy with the political situation. Denunciation of injustice, defend the oppressed, premium content over form
    • Direct style, simple vocabulary, free verse
    • Authors: Gabriel Celaya, Blas de Otero
  • Existential Poetry (1960-1975):
    • Poetry as knowledge and power
    • Search for innovation:
      • Topics: Return to the personal; children over time, love concerns
      • Style: Greater formal concern, return to traditional metrics, innovative use of language, metaphors legacy of surrealism
      • Authors: Jaime Gil, José Ángel Valente

Narrative

  • Existential Novel (1940s):
    • Bleak reality
    • Nothing (1944) by Carmen Laforet: Pessimistic view of the era through the eyes of a protagonist in Barcelona
    • Tremendous: Language mismatch showing violence in its rawness
      • The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela: Violence, crime, brutality
  • Social Novel (1950s):
    • Critical vision of Spanish society to denounce injustices
    • Topics: Spanish reality, both rural and urban social inequalities
    • Style: Content matters more than form, simple style, linear structure, importance of dialogue
    • Works and Authors: The Hive by Camilo José Cela (various characters give a raw view of Madrid at the time, misery), The Jarama by Rafael Filoni, Between Curtains by Carmen Martín Gaite
  • Renewal of the 1960s:
    • Stagnation of the social novel, attempt to renew the narrative
    • Formal complexity: More concerned about style. New techniques: flashback, multiple views, and interior monologue
    • Various subjects: Subjectivism
    • Authors and Works: Time of Silence by Luis Martín Santos, Miguel Delibes

Theatre

  • Genre most affected by censorship
  • Clear division between commercial theatre and university, exile of great innovators
  • Dominated by traditional theatre
  • Play Theatre:
    • Business-friendly tone
    • Directed at the bourgeoisie
    • Comedy about romance
    • Entertainment feature
    • Absurd humor and verbal wit
    • Authors: Enrique Cardiel Poncela, Miguel Miura
  • Social Theatre:
    • Intention is for the public to reflect on society
    • Topics: Social inequality, poverty
    • Humble characters and atmosphere in neighborhoods
    • Direct, realistic language
    • Authors: Lauro Olmo, Buero Vallejo
  • Experimental Theatre:
    • Search for new forms of expression
    • Absurd humor
    • Presence of dreams
    • More developed language with metaphors and symbols
    • Authors: Francisco Nieva, Fernando Arrabal

Literature in Exile

  • Very heterogeneous, includes writers from different genres
  • Main problem: A public that is either Spanish or foreign
  • Topics: Varied
  • Style: Depends on each author
  • Authors: Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rafael Alberti, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Max Aub, and Alejandro Casona

Journalistic Genres

  • News
  • Opinion
  • Mixed
  • Article: Opinion on a topical subject, written by a renowned author, expository-argumentative structure in opinion pages
  • Personal Column: Fixed place in the newspaper, short literary texts, writers are experts in the field
  • Editorial: Permanent place in the opinion section, unsigned, reflecting the official position of the newspaper
  • Letters to the Editor: Written by readers, topics of interest to readers

Further Study

  • Neologisms: Foreign words introduced into the vocabulary of a language
  • Loans: Words picked from other languages
  • Synonyms: Two or more words with the same meaning
  • Antonyms: Words opposite in meaning
  • Homonyms: Words spelled the same but with different meanings