Narrative Renewal in the Spanish Novel: From Social Realism to the 60s
From Rural Medicine to a New Era
Peter’s dismissal from the research center and his subsequent work in rural medicine mark a shift in the narrative technique, paving the way for a resurgence of the novel as a genre. This change in direction is evident in the works of the Generation of 50 authors, who adapted their writing to reflect the changing times.
The Renewal of the 60s Narrative: The Novel Structure
Spain’s Changing Landscape
The 1960s witnessed significant political, social, and economic transformations in Spain. Censorship relaxed, the economy improved, and tourism emerged as a stabilizing force. Increased university access for young people led to the formation of a vibrant literary scene in Barcelona, centered around the publisher Carlos Barral and his company, Seix Barral.
The Spanish American Boom
Seix Barral played a crucial role in connecting Spain with Western culture, promoting European and American literature through translations. The publisher also established several literary awards, including the prestigious Formentor Prize. This period saw the rise of the Spanish American Boom, a movement that revolutionized narrative techniques in literature.
Readers accustomed to the monotony of social realism, with its didacticism, plain language, and lack of stylistic vigor, were captivated by the originality of writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Carlos Onetti, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortázar. These authors deconstructed the traditional novel form, generating immense excitement in Spain.
The Novel Structure
The novels of the 1960s are characterized by what has been termed the Novel Structure. Established writers like Miguel Delibes and Juan Goytisolo, along with emerging authors such as Juan Benet, Juan Marsé, and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, embraced this new trend. Their novels explored characters grappling with their identities amidst a changing social environment.
Narrative Techniques
The Novel Structure employed innovative techniques such as prolepsis, flashbacks, interior monologues, complex syntax, literary language rich in metaphors, humor, and neologisms. Formally, these novels exhibited several key features:
- Shift from Collective to Individual Characters: The focus returned to individual characters, not as heroes but as anti-heroes, perpetually in conflict with themselves and the world. Proper names often lost the use of capital letters, as seen in Torrente Ballester’s The Saga/Fugue of J.B.
- The Return of the Omniscient Narrator: The omniscient narrator, privy to all aspects of the characters’ lives, reemerged. Perspectivism, or multiple viewpoints, became prevalent. Interior monologues and the use of a second-person narrative voice also gained prominence. This second-person perspective allowed protagonists to engage in self-reflection, as if unfolding their personalities. Examples include Luis Martín-Santos’s Time of Silence, Camilo José Cela’s San Camilo, 1936, Juan Goytisolo’s Marks of Identity, and Juan Benet’s Return to Región. Some novels even employed multiple narrative voices.
- Disruption of Chronological Time: The traditional linear progression of time was abandoned. Time became subjective, often centered on the characters’ memories. Frequent jumps between past and present were achieved through flashbacks. The stream of consciousness technique captured the flow of thoughts without logical order. Another notable technique was the free indirect style, where the narrative voice seamlessly transitioned into the character’s voice without connecting links or introductory verbs.
Camilo José Cela: A Literary Maverick
Camilo José Cela, a prolific and innovative writer, defied categorization, embracing realism, objectivism, and tremendismo. A poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and storyteller, Cela was born in 1916 and died in 2002. An admirer of the Generation of ’98 and a devoted follower of Pío Baroja, Cela’s novels featured distinctive characters and settings.
Cela’s Literary Style
Cela’s writing was characterized by rich language, detailed descriptions, and a broad perspective on reality. He often depicted marginalized individuals, such as the deaf, mute, and homosexual. His characters, typically with full names and nicknames, were complex and psychologically nuanced. Cela masterfully employed a wide range of registers and adapted his language to reflect geographical variations.
Key Works
Cela’s The Hive ushered in the era of social realism. Other notable works include New Adventures and Misadventures of Lazarillo de Tormes (1944), Journey to the Alcarria, Rest Pavilion, San Camilo, 1936 (1969), Christ Versus Arizona (1988), and The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942).
The Family of Pascual Duarte: Exploring Tremendismo
The Family of Pascual Duarte delves into the dark aspects of life, portraying cruelty, suffering, death, anxiety, and nausea. Unlike existentialism, which seeks meaning in human existence, tremendismo unflinchingly depicts the squalor of life without offering solutions.
The novel begins with Pascual’s memories from prison as he awaits execution, recounting the events that led to his predicament. Pascual, a primitive man from a village in Albacete (Almendralejo), commits five murders throughout the narrative. He kills his horse when it falls and causes his pregnant wife to miscarry. He kills his dog, Chispa, because he feels its eyes reproach him for the death of his second child. He kills El Estirao for seducing and exploiting his sister, Rosario. He kills his mother for her constant criticism and blames her for the family’s misery (his father, an alcoholic, neglected his wife and children, and his brother drowned in a pot of oil at the age of seven). Finally, he commits a social crime by killing the village’s cacique, the Count of Torremejía, leading to his death sentence.
The novel opens with the line “Lord, I’m not a bad man.” This creates a stark contrast between Pascual’s self-perception and his actions, raising the question of whether he is a murderer or a victim of circumstance. Cela evokes compassion for Pascual, prompting the reader to see him not only as a murderer but also as a victim of his environment.
Other Trends in Social Realism
Novels about the Dispossessed
Social realism also explored the lives of marginalized individuals, such as prisoners. Jesús Fernández Santos’s Los Bravos and Jesús López Pacheco’s Central Station depict the harsh realities of prison life. Another notable work in this vein is José María Castillo Navarro’s The Slab Where Dogs Die in the Street.
Travel Books
: they were very fashionable to denounce certain areas oppressed. Journey to the Alcarria highlights of Cela, and Goytisolo Níjar fields. Other topics covered in this novel are divorce, abortion …. Topics considered taboo at the time.Stages and great authors: Stage 1: from 1951 to 1958: The key author of this stage is Ferlosio Rafael Sanchez, winner of the Premio Nadal in 1955 for his novel El Jarama. This book chronicles a summer Sunday on the banks of a river Jarama, over 16 hours where we attended the talks insignificant a group of young people with no interest. Characters are urban, lower middle class to speak of banalities and lack of character. Just leave spend their lives. Through them, the author provides a social critique by highlighting the emptiness of this new generation. There is only one element that breaks the monotony: the death of Lucita. Ferlosio critique of mass lacks initiative, young people have in their hands the future and which can not expect any attitude refreshing. Abundant technical description and impressionistic. Also highlights include Carmen Martín Gaite curtains, reflects the life of a group of girls in a provincial town. The plot, the arrival of Paul Klein, a handsome German teacher, and what happens around him is nothing but an excuse to show the oppression that provincial society exercises over its people who see life go through curtains of their windows without having the guts to do anything. Conformism, boredom, lack of imagination, delusion … are characteristics common to all the girls. Finally, the brightness and blood, Ignacio Aldecoa: on the outskirts of a village in New Castile, in the Civil Guard barracks in living a corporal and five civil guards and their families. The story is organized into 7 chapters titled with the hours between noon on a hot summer (the brightness) until dusk, when receiving the news by phone that one of the two couples, who serve at the fair, has been killed (the blood), without specifying the name. They learn first the wives of the guards that are in the barracks, and they have to prepare the others for the news. The tense hours of waiting are interrupted by the narrator to tell the past of women, one by one, before being wives of the Civil Guards. The presents from infancy to the present, and each devotes one chapter, alternating the past (evoked time) with the present time (lived), breaking the tension of waiting. At dusk (twilight) bring out the body of Francisco Santos, the only bachelor’s barracks, a gypsy who has fired a pistol at the village fair. Life goes on. Stage 2: 1958 to 1962: The peak phase of Social Realism. We found new friendships and Summer Storm Juan García Hortelano, novels in which we supine portrays the life of certain bourgeois circles in the spring. The protagonist is a collective (a group of friends). A girl is pregnant and talk about a taboo topic: abortion. It reflects a certain youth who drowned in a glass of water. Juan Marse written on this line Enclosed with one toy, a book that portrays the Catalan bourgeoisie dominated by alcohol and sex. Stage 3 epilogue: 1962 to 1968: Increase the criticisms of this type of fiction. Social Realism is stuck in an stereotyped formula which had been abused. Furthermore, this literature does not just come to town, to whom it was addressed. It does need a change, an evolution.NEW SAILING: 1962: Time of Silence by Luis Martin Santos: Toward the 60 Social Realism comes to an end. This is facilitated by a writer, Luis Martín Santos, who in 1962 inaugurated the Realism Dialectical with his novel Tiempo de silencio. With this novel than Social Realism and introducing new techniques, such as the use of the 2 nd person interior monologue. Two years after this great success the writer dies in a car accident. The novelty of this novel lies in rejecting the earlier novel. Characters regain individuality and show its contradictions. There are simple representative social types, but individual agencies. The narrator returns to judge and assess. We note an argument in which Peter, the protagonist, a young medical researcher is required to participate in an illegal abortion that causes a death. Seduced by the daughter of the owner of the pension which is hosted, formalizes the relationship with the girl, but she is stabbed in retaliation for medical intervention in abortion.