Modernism: Thematic and Formal Renewal in Literature
Thematic Renewal
Escape Artist: The odds with reality, with the bourgeois world, takes a Modernist evasiveness in time to ancient Greece (myths, statues), to the Middle Ages (how it looks, mysterious legendary castles), to the Renaissance (classical myths, palaces). And an escape into space toward the exotic in the East (flowers, paid..).
This attitude reflects Parnassianism: sensitive externality.
Intimacy: An expression of intimacy dominated life attitude, sensual, erotic, and provocative toward the forbidden, due to Decadence. He also expressed attitudes of loneliness and melancholy, due to the Symbolism of Becquer.
Cosmopolitanism: Get rid of the roots of the country to feel like a citizen of the world, hoping that universal brotherhood prevails. Paris: cosmopolitan city par excellence – interesting, delicious, bohemian.
Indigenismo: Assessment of pre-Columbian cultures.
Hispano-reaction: A claim against the Anglo, represented by the USA, which starts to show its power.
Spiritualism: Seeking an explanation for reality in religion, sometimes in Christianity or other more exotic religions like Buddhism.
These issues show that there are two stages or two currencies:
- Modernism Frenchified: Focus on the externality of beauty and the sensitive.
- Modernism Hispanic: Intimate, centered on man and his problems.
Formal Renewal
In Style
- Importance is attached to the color shown with abundant chromatic adjectives that run the gamut from the more intense to the softer ones.
- Importance of musicality expressed in the lexicon (sonatas, arias, symphonies) expressed by the rhythm of the verse or use of rhetorical figures as synesthesia or alliteration.
- Enrichment lexicon: Use of cultism and exotic-sounding words, mythological, mysterious and ancient, or the mysterious reference to the story.
- Using bold images: Comparisons, metaphors, symbols suggested by their power, effective to cause feelings in readers as they consider that the poem must be captured and enjoyed through the senses.
In the Metric
- Use of traditional verses (octosyllables and heroic verse) revitalize some less employees (hendecasyllable, dodecasyllabic, and Alexandrian) subjected to a new rhythm is achieved by the use of enjambment, internal rhymes or accentual feet (division of tonic syllables).
- In stanzas: Use the existing preference of the broken foot, the assonanced silva, and although the sonnet may undergo changes other than the traditional scheme.
Authors and Works
In Latin America
- Precursors: Julian del Casal, Jose de Marti
- Central Figure: Ruben Dario. Complex personality in which conflicting attitudes fit, his work alone defines modernism’s great importance in the evolution of Spanish poetry of the 20th century. His major books of poetry are: “Blue”, whereas the beginning of modernism is a set of stories and poems Parnassian. The fully wins Parnassianism “Profane Hymns”. His book “Songs of Life and Hope”, though still present sensuality, music… shows a shift toward existential concerns (poem “Fatal”, “Autumn Song”…) and into what is Hispanic versus Anglo-Saxon as the ode to “Roosevelt”.
In Spain
Overall, modernism was less bright, exotic, and daring than in Latin America, preferring the intimate to the escapist attitude.
Poetry
- Represented by Manuel Machado in his works combining Andalusianism and cosmopolitanism, sensationalism and religiosity.
- Antonio Machado with his “Wilderness” that is published with the title “Solitudes, Galleries and Other Poems,” says this book in an intimate tone in a dialogue with the same sign on what he calls universal human (time, death, God) through the use of symbols like water, the sea, the evening…).
- Juan Ramon Jimenez in its first phase, sensitive also in the importance of intimacy with color, adjectives, brilliant works as “The Murmuring Solitude,” “Poetic Prose Platero and I”…
Prose
Authors such as Valle Inclan stand with his work “Sonata” and works as “Autumn”, “Summer”, “Spring”, and “Winter” in the precious prose that recounts the love affairs of the Marquis of Bradomin, a Don Juan defined as ugly, Catholic, and sentimental.
Theater
Written in verse with a modernist sense, recreates historical topics such as Eduardo Marquina in his “In Flanders the Sun Has Set”.