Spanish Literature: Poetry, Novel, and Theater (1940s-1950s)
Spanish Literature: 1940s Poetry Trends
The post-war era marked two major poetic trends representative of the 40s: rooted poetry and rootless poetry, characterized by a tragic tone and straightforward expression.
Rooted Poetry
The lyric of the Generation of ’36 is the most representative of rooted poetry, one that draws from Greece and finds no anguish in a world that is considered orderly. It valued classical forms like the sonnet and addressed themes of religion, love, and patriotism.
Uprooted Poetry
The tragic existential lyrical tone expresses disgust, anguish, and despair in the face of a chaotic world. The tone often takes on a religious theme, with many existential questions posed to God about the meaning of human suffering. The style and language are direct, colloquial, hard-hitting, and passionate, with alarmist imagery in clear opposition to the serene and harmonious aesthetics of Garcilaso. The tone used prosaic verse, though the sonnet endures in some poets.
Poetry of the 50s: Evolution Towards Social Themes
Existential poetry begins to evolve towards social poetry, expressing individual distress to manifest solidarity with others. The existential tone is left behind, and a lyric emerges that is a testimony to commonality, covering the problems of human beings in their environment. The topics covered are those that affect the community. The subject of reflections on Spain in Hispanic society is retrieved. The style is simple, with colloquial language, sometimes prosaic and very expressive.
The 1940s Novel: A New Narrative
The novel cannot link to the social narrative of the thirties, banned by the Franco regime, and validates the aesthetic looks of the dehumanized ’20s. There are three types of narrative: ideological novel, realist novel, and humorous novel. Novels that mark the beginning of a new narrative are isolated cases. Works share the gloomy, existential tone contrasted with triumphalism or evasive attitudes, in stories full of confused, sad, and frustrated characters.
The 1950s Novel: Social Concerns
The novel abandons the existential vision and reflects new social concerns. Social realism appears in 1951 with La Noria (The Ferris Wheel) and La Colmena (The Hive) by Luis Romero, agreeing in presenting a collective character. In 1954, the sentimental tone reaches its peak. The theme of the novel of the decade of the 50s is Spanish society itself: the harshness of rural life, the difficulties of the transformation of peasants into industrial workers, the holding proletariat, and the vanity of bourgeois life. The style of the novel is simple, in normal language and narrative technique, it aims to reach the widest audience, subordinating technique for evidential or critical content.
The Theater of the 40s: Comedy and Drama
The genres are comedy, which dominates entertainment or ideological evasion, and drama, which comes to justify the established order. Jacinto Benavente, Jose Maria Permán, Joaquin Calvo Sotelo, and Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena succeed in both streams. Both trends are the seeds of the two streams of post-war theater: humorous theater and ideological drama.
The Theater of the 50s: Social Realism
As in other genres, in the theater of the ’40s, there is a current that moves from the existential to social realism in the decade of the 50s. The principal representatives are Antonio Buero Vallejo and Alfonso Sastre.