20th Century Literature: Existentialism, Modernism, and Social Commentary
The End of the Two Blocs
The political landscape that emerged after World War II changed dramatically following the demise of the Berlin Wall and German unification. The final twentieth century seems marked by vast inequalities between the industrialized world and the third world.
Major Trends in Thought
In the realm of thought, three major trends emerged: existentialism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism.
Existentialism
A leader of the twentieth century existential pessimism is Martin Heidegger. He considers that the individual, thrown into this world and doomed to death, must build its destination, and there is the sense of anguish and despair at human freedom.
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis explores the existence of a subconscious from which impulses are repressed by social norms or morals.
Marxism
Based on the thought of Karl Marx, Marxism considers society defined by its economy, the mode of production, and evolving through the class struggle.
The Aesthetics of the Twentieth Century
There are three important trends in the aesthetics of the twentieth century: the existential, experimental, and social.
Existential
It reflects the anguish of the human being and considers the meaning of life and their despair at suffering and death. This trend highlights Kafka. In Spain, it is collected by the Generation of ’98 (Unamuno, Baroja).
Experimental
Characterized by the desire to break with the past and the search for original innovations, experimental aesthetics found expression in the avant-garde. In Spain, the avant-garde influence is particularly evident in the generation of 27 from each decade since 1960.
Social
Social aesthetics is geared towards the reporting of social and political problems. In Latin American social poetry, include P. Neruda. For Spain, R. Alberty and Hernandez.
Twentieth Century Literature Periods
Early Years of the Twentieth Century
The early years of the twentieth century saw the development of aestheticism and antirealist movements initiated in the late nineteenth century. These movements were characterized by their worship of beauty, including the Pre-Raphaelites, the Parnassianism and symbolism in France, Latin America, and modernism in Spain.
Interwar Period
In the interwar period, the avant-garde consolidated, with experimental flows in a violent break with the previous aesthetic art. They proposed a radically different, unsentimental, and dehumanizing approach.
Major European Vanguard
Futurism
Futurism appeared in Italy in 1909, with the first manifesto by Marinetti. It defined an art that breaks all the rules and sings the modern world.
Cubism
Cubism emerged in 1913 with Apollinaire. In painting, it presents an image decomposed. The calligram creates images.
Dadaism
Dadaism, in 1916, claims the child’s world. It suggested releasing the imagination and recovering incoherent speech.
Expressionism
Expressionism creates a political art that reflects the discomfort of certain sectors for the 1st World War.
Surrealism
Surrealism is based on the theories of Freud.
Parnassianism
Parnassianism is a trend essentially classicist aesthetic that aspires to the formal perfection and brilliance of sensory art for the party. It evades reality through fantasy, recreating exotic or distant worlds. The world is refined and precious. Leconte and Gautier are notable proponents.
Symbolism
Symbolism is a reaction to the aestheticism of Parnassianism. It defines that the purpose of poetry is to convey feelings through symbols, creating an intimate poetry, subjective and neo-romantic. It aims to capture the correlation between the soul and the landscape and understand the world beyond outward appearances. They do not describe the feelings directly. So the exterior landscape merges with the interior. A sad and sentimental tone predominates. Baudelaire and Verlaine are notable symbolists.
Nouveau
Nouveau starts in Latin America. Stake Ruben Dario. (profane prose). It combines the desire for social and artistic renewal. It represents a political and cultural self-assertion, since it rejects the Spanish influence and searching for new models, mainly in the French lyric and pre-Columbian myths and traditions.
The Literature of Early Twentieth Century
Novel
The novel in the early twentieth century was realistic and naturalistic, heir to the narrative of the 19th century. In this line fits the work of Blasco Ibanez with a great social tone, often set in Valencian (the cabin).
Essay
The essay was grown by 98 authors, Unamuno, and Azorin.
Unamuno
Unamuno cultivated poetry, drama, the novel, and testing. His writings offer a great drive by the repetition of some topics and impassioned style. The themes addressed in his works reveal his own career. At first, he was dominated by concerns of Regenerationists. This is the time when socialism is related to Basque. Since 1897 he turns to the subject-religious existence. His novel deals only with issues that concern him and delete everything that is not essential in the story. The novel is dense (Nivola). Debugging occurs elected, deleted references to the landscape and the circumstances. They express their existential conflict through an extended dialogue or interior monologue (Love and Pedagogy). Two dominant themes are reflections on Spain and the existential concerns. The subject of Spain, Spanish, and criticizes the fact of Europeanization commitment and progress. The existential theme develops the conflict between the desire for immortality that supports religion seems opposed to that desire.
Azorin
All Azorin’s literature revolves around the theme of time, maintaining landscapes and feelings. It evokes the reality in a sad, nostalgic way and makes abundant scenic descriptions. They reflect the correlation between the landscape and the state of the soul. This feature enhances the lyricism of the description. The style is precision and clarity. The detail of the descriptions gives the impression of slowness. The lexicon is rich and includes archaisms. His novel has no argument. It reduces to the description of sensations and environments. Try the salient features; culminate. The obsession with time, correspondence between the landscape and mood, melancholia, and detailed descriptions and retailers. Two themes dominate: the landscape and literary criticism. Landscapes reflect the author’s ideological evolution. Critical social and political considerations of the Spanish reality. Literary criticism offers their subjective view of Spanish literature.
Baroja
Baroja also wrote numerous novels and short stories, and some trials meorias. He stands out as the foremost novelist of his time, especially brilliant in the portrayal of characters in the description of ambients and dialogues. The reality of life that shows Baroja is usually impregnated with his pessimism. The characters are often Baroja asocial beings or rebels. But the features of two types: on the one hand, men of action who struggle to escape the everyday mediocrity of the other, the characters confused and apathetic that they are unable to act. Suburban environments, the life of the poor and their social, political, and economic. The style is characterized by Baroja sensillex, contains the living language and uses language antirhetoric. Novels: Trilogies characterized its work in a trilogy of novels bear little relation to each other. The fight for the life, this Borman for the picking, bad boils and red aurora. Earth basca Aizgorri house meets, the primogeniture Zalacain Labraz and adventurer. The race: the lady wandering the city of fog and the tree of science.