Joan Alcover: Modernism, Noucentisme, and Humanization of Art
Joan Alcover: Between Modernism and Noucentisme
Alcover’s work stands at the intersection of two currents. On one hand, Modernism champions the creative freedom of the human spirit and the expansion of intimate poetic emotions. On the other, Noucentisme focuses exclusively on form and the aesthetic aspects of Modernism, advocating art for art’s sake, a poet closed in his ivory tower, completely detached from the rest of humanity. Alcover announces this in the conference “The Humanization of Art,”
Read MoreA Concise History of Theater: From Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages
Origin of Theater: The Greco-Roman World
Greek literature is the oldest surviving literature and exerted the greatest influence, though only a tenth of its production has reached us. We owe what we preserve to the learned men of Byzantium. The Greeks created a simple theater, not directed at the elite but at the citizen who demanded intelligence, trial, and no mystery, imagination, and passion.
Tragedy
The word tragedy designates tragic and horrible events. Aristotle defines it as the representation
Read MoreNineteenth-Century Spanish Literature: Realism and Modernism
Nineteenth-Century Realism
Literary and artistic tastes were moving away from Romanticism. Passion, the fantastic, and subjectivity were abandoned in favor of external reality and the everyday. Works were based on observations of life, seeking credibility and objectivity, documenting what writers observed.
Benito Perez Galdos
Galdos participated in national politics in the Canary Islands, taking ever more radical positions, but never losing his tolerant character. At the end of his life, he was forgotten,
Read MoreSpanish Poetry: Generations and Movements
Characteristics of the Generation of ’27
It is known as the Generation of ’27 to a group of poets who share certain characteristics. The authors of this group maintained very close personal relationships, often centered around the Residencia de Estudiantes, a free institution of education. In 1927, they participated in an act of homage to Góngora, whom they admired for his quest for a different literary language, distinct from everyday speech. All of them began to publish around 1920. They received
Read More13th-14th Century Catalan Language & Literature
Expansion of Catalan in the 13th and 14th Centuries
The 13th and 14th centuries saw a significant expansion of the Catalan language. Early authors developed lyrical poetry, influenced by renowned Provençal troubadours. This literary tradition originated in the south of France, in territories then belonging to the Crown of Aragon. The conquest of Mallorca, Ibiza, and Valencia led to the annexation of these lands and the spread of Catalan, as they were repopulated by Catalans.
Minstrels and *Chansons
Read MoreSpanish Literature: Baroque Period Key Authors & Works
Luis de Góngora
Góngora’s new style is based on the concentration of procedures, which is a stylistic and poetic revolutionary concept. Despite being elitist and removed from the accusations of darkness, new forms spread and came to constitute a poetic stream, Culteranismo. Polyphemus and Galatea is a mythological poem composed of 63 royal octaves. Góngora, with Polyphemus, surprised his contemporaries with the poem’s difficulty and novelties. He contributed numerous mythological allusions and,
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