20th Century Spanish Literature: From Exile to Experimentation
20th Century Spanish Literature
The Literature Since 1939
During the 1940s, writers found new approaches to literature. The creative writing of this era is marked by rootlessness and shows an existential tone. In the 1950s, social realism is characterized by a critical attitude. During the 1960s and 1970s, writers tended to search for new forms of expression and experimentation. In the last years of the twentieth century to the present, narrative has reached an extraordinary boom with no definite trends.
The Novel of Exile
All writers have agreed on the causes and consequences of exile and how they lived through the civil war. Among the exiled writers whose books were banned by censorship was Ramon J. Sender (1901-1982), who wrote a series of novels published under the general title Chronicle of the Morning, which recreates his childhood and youth.
The 1940s: The Existential Novel
Anxiety and rootlessness dominate the most interesting literature of the day. Two novels featuring characters who have nothing to do with heroes reveal a new way to face reality:
- The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela, starring a peasant from Extremadura sentenced to death for a series of murders, reflects a world of violence and misery.
- Nada by Carmen Laforet, in which a young woman who arrives in Barcelona to begin her college experience encounters loneliness, dissatisfaction, and the bitterness of life.
The 1950s: Social Realism
The emergence of new writers who see the novel as a condemnation of an unfair social situation. Critical realism and social realism are represented by the so-called mid-century generation, composed of writers like Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio. Realism and the pursuit of objectivity are imposed: the author simply tells a reality that is already quite significant, and aesthetic concerns are not as important. Spanish society becomes the protagonist, and the narrative theme is collective. Titles like The Hive by Camilo Jose Cela, set in postwar Madrid, are constituted by a succession of scenes that show how everyone is struggling to survive. In Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio’s novel Jarama, the routines of society are reflected through discussions of a group of young people who spend a day trip along the river.
The 1960s: The Experimental Narrative
The novelists feel the need to seek new formulas. This change in literature is contributed to by two factors:
- The influence of foreign novelists.
- The discovery of the American novel of the moment, with titles such as Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa, or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
Authors of the Experimental Narrative
Experimental Narrative Techniques
Among the narrative techniques that are incorporated include:
- The importance attached to the interior monologue. It is a resource that allows the reader to know the inner thoughts of the character.
- Changes in terms of storytelling. In the same story, the narration can shift from first-person to third-person.
- The narrator can sometimes make ironic interventions about the narrative.
- The division into chapters is sometimes replaced by sequences separated by spaces, and there are some novels that have no division of any kind.
The Novel Between 1975 and 1990
Authors returning from exile and new novelists are concerned about the craft of storytelling. The argument again has an important role and is recovered as a source of pleasure in the novel by Manuel Vazquez Montalban, author of The Pianist and creator of Pepe Carvalho, the detective protagonist of a series of detective stories. There are many women writing in the narrative genre.
Contemporary Novelists
Javier Marias, Almudena Grandes, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Arturo Perez Reverte, Lucia Etxebarria, Manuel Rivas, and Juan Jose Millas.
Background: 1939 – Late 1960s
Two International Events
The May 1968 protests in France were a strong criticism of the capitalist democratic system. The Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the first revolt against the communist system in Eastern Europe. Although both movements failed in their time, they helped transform European culture, making it much more critical of the political system and more open to new artistic trends.
Two Circumstances that Influenced the Literature of the Franco Regime
The exile of many of the poets who had belonged to the Generation of ’27. The censorship that made theater the most dramatic genre of poetry because it was a show with the greatest social impact. Many authors revised their texts so they could be represented. This disappeared after the death of Franco.
Postwar Poetry
The postwar trends are:
- Poetry with existential themes such as loneliness or anxiety that reflect the uneasiness of the war and its aftermath, and love or religious feeling in which many poets take refuge. Other poets express their anguish with a protest to God, as is the case of Sons of Wrath by Damaso Alonso.
- In 1945, Postismo emerges, claiming creative freedom and risk-taking.
- Also, the Canticle continues the intimate line of the poets of the Generation of ’27 with a poetry characterized by the search for balance and aesthetic perfection.
Poetry in the 1950s or Social Poetry
In the mid-1950s, the movement known as social poetry began, and the existential problems of individuals gave way to the expression of political protest. The poet no longer speaks of himself but speaks of collective anguish. Authors include Blas de Otero, I Ask for Peace and the Word, and Gabriel Celaya, Iberian Cantos.
Theater in the 1950s and 1960s
At this time, three types of theater coexist:
- Existential theater: a minority genre, starring characters tormented by anxiety, isolation, and loneliness. Antonio Buero Vallejo started this trend with the release of Story of a Staircase. Alfonso Sastre expressed similar problems in Death Squad.
- Comic theater also has a disillusioned view of life, with characters who are forced to succumb to the pressure of social convention. The most important authors are Miguel Mihura and Enrique Jardiel Poncela.
- In the mid-1950s, social criticism appears in theater. Theater shows injustices, and its protagonists denounce the lack of freedom. To avoid censorship, they use period pieces and denounce the present through the past. The most prominent authors are: Alfonso Sastre, Laura Olmo, and Antonio Buero Vallejo.
Theater Today: Trends in Recent Years
In recent years, a realistic trend has reappeared, whose representatives write plays that are conservative on a formal level. Fernando Fernan Gomez recreates memories of the Civil War in Bicycles are for Summer. José Luis Alonso de Santos’s Get Off the Moor or The Tobacconist of Vallecas is based on a real event (the robbery of a tobacconist in Vallecas).
European Theater of the Twentieth Century
Epic theater, originating in Germany, is characterized as a narrative theater with a message of social criticism. Among Bertolt Brecht’s works are Galileo Galilei and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The Theater of Cruelty, originating in France, is based on the free interpretation of the text, public improvisation, and audience participation. Antonin Artaud’s most outstanding works are: Heliogabalus and The Conquest of Mexico. The Theater of the Absurd, with Irish and Romanian origins but written in French, aims to show the absurdity of human existence and social organization through special effects. A representative play is The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco.