Spanish Literature of the 19th Century
Themes, Style, and Metrical Lines
Two Main Themes
The Escapist Line
This line is characterized by the protagonist’s refuge in exotic places and ancient times. It evokes palaces, gardens, and castles, featuring characters like noble knights, sad princesses, legendary warriors, swans, and fantastic animals. Eroticism appears as a sign of rebellion.
The Intimate Line
This line expresses discomfort with reality. Love and the world are viewed with melancholy and sadness. Nostalgia and anguish are reflected in autumnal landscapes, sunsets, or solitary gardens.
Features
Musicality
The musicality of the verse aligns with the themes. Marked rhythms are used for heroic deeds, while soft melodies accompany intimate emotions like the sadness of a princess or the melancholy of a sunset.
Lexicon
The lexicon is novel and rich, using neologisms, unusual voices, and cultisms. Adjectives are varied and nuanced.
Rhetorical Figures
Rhetorical figures abound, including synesthesia, alliteration, metaphors, and imagery.
Pace
The pace is achieved through skillful use of meter. Alexandrine, hendecasyllabic, and dodecasyllabic verses are used. The most important verse forms are the silva, octave, lira, and royal.
Antonio Machado
Machado’s beginnings are close to Modernism. In his 1903 work Soledades, the poetic atmosphere is full of still and quiet environments, gardens, parks, cypress trees, and deserts. Intimacy, a sad and melancholic tone, and symbolism are some features of these poems.
Campos de Castilla (1912-1917) is Machado’s best-known work. The poet’s emotion when confronted with Castile leads him to a different mode of expression. His poetry becomes more realistic but austere.
Other poems include portraits of friends, compositions in memory of his wife and Soria, and short poems and reflections with sentences that announce his third stage: Nuevas Canciones (1924).
In terms of meter, Machado used popular forms. His style is characterized by a lack of rhetorical complications; it is sober and clear.
Clarín
Clarín’s journalistic work, particularly his literary criticism, stands out. His satirical capacity created many enemies.
His narrative works include short stories like Pipá (1886) or Doña Berta. He wrote many short stories dominated by the detailed psychological study of the characters. The characters are simple and treated with understanding and sympathy. Adiós, Cordera! is a famous example.
La Regenta (1884/85)
The plot is simple: Ana Ozores lives in Vetusta with her husband, Don Víctor Quintana, a kind man much older than her. Dissatisfied with her marriage and life, she falls prey to the spiritual seduction of Don Fermín de Pas. However, this spiritual seduction intersects with the carnal seduction of Don Álvaro Mesía. Don Álvaro achieves his purpose, triggering the drama. Ana’s husband dies in a duel, and Ana is left with the scornful looks and judgment of society.
The main protagonist of the novel is Vetusta society itself. In his narrative, Clarín blends narration, description, and various modes of dialogue, making habitual use of free indirect style.
General Characteristics of the Realist Novel
Objective Observation
The realist work is born from the observation and analysis of reality. The description and representation of real life is its goal. The writer reflects the contemporary atmosphere in which they live, analyzing their society and presenting it to the reader. All social classes are represented.
Thesis Approach
The author aims to defend an ideological thesis through their creation.
Psychological Analysis of Characters
The protagonists of the realist novel are ordinary characters. The description of their character is based on the study of family environments, education, will, and past events. Bourgeois characters dominate, but as the century progresses, proletarians and marginalized characters become increasingly important. Many novels feature female characters.
Omniscient Narrator
This is the most common type of narrator in the realist novel. They control the entire narrative and know everything about their characters.
Style
The language tends to be natural and avoids rhetorical excess. The narrator usually maintains a cultivated and literary tone.
The Newspaper as a Dissemination Medium
Many realist works were serialized in newspapers.
Pérez Galdós
Pérez Galdós was the most important realist author. A prolific writer, he created a vast body of work: 32 novels, 46 titles in the Episodios Nacionales series, 24 plays, and 15 volumes of articles and essays. His fiction aims to display an image of life.
The Episodios Nacionales are the most important part of his historical production. The rest of his novels can be divided into:
Novels of the First Period
These are thesis novels that attack religious fanaticism and the presence of the clergy. Example: Doña Perfecta (1876).
Contemporary Novels
These reflect the changing society of the time. This period includes some of his most important novels: Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87). Galdós focuses on four characters from his environment: Juanito Santa Cruz and his wife Jacinta, the young working-class Fortunata (Juanito’s lover), and her husband, Maximiliano Rubín, an insignificant but imaginative man.
Symbolic Novels
These reflect new concerns, both abstract and spiritual.
In terms of style, Galdós’s novels are characterized by their dialogic nature. He is a master at reproducing real speech.