Spanish Sociopolitical and Artistic Scene: 1868-1936
Sociopolitical Instability (1868-1936)
Spain experienced a turbulent sociopolitical period marked by instability. Following the six-year revolutionary period (1868-1876), the Bourbon Restoration brought Alfonso XII and later Alfonso XIII to the throne. The stability of Alfonso XII’s reign contrasted sharply with his successor’s, which was plagued by riots in 1923, leading to Primo de Rivera’s resignation in 1930. The Second Republic was established in 1931, but the European crisis facilitated the rise of the right. In the 1936 elections, Manuel Azaña was elected President. A divided nation led to the military uprising in Morocco on July 17th, marking the beginning of the Civil War.
Social Transformations
Key social changes included education reform and a shift away from a stratified class system. A new wave of intellectuals challenged the conservative, Church-dominated society.
The Silver Age: Artistic and Intellectual Ferment
The Silver Age of Spanish art and intellect was born from this ideological crisis.
The Generation of ’98
The term ‘Generation of ’98’, coined by Azorín, refers to a group of intellectuals who used the historical context to analyze Spain’s leadership and advocate for national reform.
They admired classic authors like Quevedo, Cervantes, and Góngora, incorporating popular elements into their works. They also drew inspiration from medieval literature (Berceo, The Archpriest of Hita, and Manrique), as well as Bécquer and Romantic writers like Larra, embracing anti-Baroque and melancholic influences.
Three main concerns united them despite their personal and ideological differences: politics, religion, and the essence of Spain. Pío Baroja’s The Tree of Knowledge encapsulates the sentiments of this generation.
Political and Religious Concerns
Politically, they rejected the Restoration’s methods, criticizing its leadership and conservatism while advocating for reforms. They envisioned a comprehensive transformation encompassing not only politics but also Spanish thought and customs. While their early ideas were radical, they later moderated. They primarily used essays, but also novels, plays, and poetry, to express their views. Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life explored human and national dilemmas.
Their religious concerns revolved around existential questions like the existence of God and eternal life, often expressed in unconventional ways. Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, Martyr and The Agony of Christianity delve into these themes.
Spain and its Essence
Their preoccupation with Spain permeated their literary output, evident in their interest in the people and the landscape, particularly Castile, which they saw as Spain’s core. Their descriptions, however, were not realistic depictions but subjective interpretations of Spanish history. Influenced by Spencer and Taine, they believed in the interdependence of landscape and man, as seen in works like Campos de Castilla, where the harsh landscape mirrors the portrayal of Castilians as rugged and violent.
Their curiosity about foreign cultures and desire for Europeanization coexisted with their love for Spain, fueling their historical research into the national essence. Unamuno’s concept of ‘intrahistory’ emphasized the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people as the true drivers of history.
Aesthetics and Style
The Generation of ’98 rejected formalism and ornamentation, favoring clear communication. Their literary art prioritized truth and aimed to explore life’s depths with simplicity and clarity. Unamuno’s Niebla exemplifies this with its schematic narrative. Baroja’s prose was spontaneous and conversational. Azorín’s style, characterized by short sentences and precise language, reflected his pursuit of simplicity and clarity.
Theatrical Genre: Drama and Comedy
Theater is the quintessential dialogue-driven literary genre. Characters, without narrator intervention, develop the action through dialogue in a specific time and place.
Dramatic Subgenres
- Tragedy: Characters are victims of passions (love, hate, jealousy, revenge) leading to a disastrous end.
- Comedy: Presents everyday conflicts or customs in a lighthearted manner, always with a happy ending.
- Drama: Depicts conflicts between characters, but unlike tragedy, the struggle isn’t heroic, often blending tragic and comic elements.
A play’s structural elements mirror those of a story, recreating a series of events, factual or fictional.
Characters
Characters drive the drama, acting and speaking on stage. They can be main (central to the narrative action) or secondary (less significant overall but relevant in specific scenes). Main characters include the protagonist (the central figure) and the antagonist (in conflict with the protagonist). The chorus appears sporadically, contributing to the narrative setting. In Greek theater, it represented the community.
Characters can be flat (broadly characterized, identified with a single trait) or round (complex and contradictory, evolving throughout the play).
Action and Structure
The action is the linear recreation of events. The plot is a summary of the most important events.
The internal structure is defined by a conflict (between characters, a character and the world, or ideas). The basic structure is: Introduction, Intensification, Climax, Decline, and Outcome.
The external structure divides the play into acts (major sections, usually three, marked by time and action development). Acts are separated by curtains, choruses, lighting changes, etc. The action can also be divided into scenes (set according to changes in space, setting, or time, usually marked by scenery changes). Scenes within acts are determined by character entrances and exits.
Space and Time
Dramatic space refers to the locations of the action, while stage space is the physical performance area.
Time is reflected in three ways:
- Historical period: The time in which the events occur.
- Dramatic time: The sequence of events and their relationship to reality, including flashbacks, prolepsis, simultaneous actions, and ellipsis.
- Stage time: The duration of the performance.
The Rule of Three Units
Classical theater imposed the rule of three units: a single action, in a single place, within a single day. However, playwrights rarely adhered strictly to these rules.
Dramatic Discourse
It consists of two distinct varieties of speech, even graphically, and meet very different functions: the dialogue of the characters and stage directions.
The theatrical dialogue has a particular typographical arrangement: Each intervention is preceded by the name of the corresponding character. The bottom line is that dialogue allows the presence of different voices in the play, like so many characters involved. Therefore, the action takes place, supposedly objectively and independently as they are the characters themselves who make progress through dialogue, not an external narrator. This, then, the main function of dialogue, creating the dramatic action, be the vehicle that makes explicit the conflict of the play.
In addition, through dialogue, the characters also express their moods, feelings, desires … with what becomes the main instrument used by the author for characterization.
Also part of the discourse of the so-called character monologues, oral interventions in which it is not directed specifically at other characters. They fall into two types: the soliloquy, which addresses itself to a kind of interior monologue, spoken aloud and the nickname monologue in which the character directly addresses the audience.
Have a special character called asides, interventions of a character who utters it but others present at the scene can not hear. They tend to be brief and contain comments on the action or dialogue that addresses the character itself (as an internal reflection) or the viewer.
The stage directions are secondary parts of the dramatic text (usually in parentheses and italics) in which the author gives some indication of the scenic elements. Comments are narrative and descriptive in nature, usually short, about the characters (appearance, dress, gestures and movements) on the space (decorated, entrances and exits of the characters), environment (lights, sound effects), etc. With them, the author tries to control the text from some aspects of staging. In some works, eg in the entire theater of Valle-Inclan, they have acquired a literary character and become a fundamental part of the text.