Spanish Literary Movements: Realism, Naturalism, and Avant-Garde
Realism
Realism is the cultural movement of bourgeois society in the nineteenth century, which rejected fantasy and romantic idealism. General features of realism are: observation and accurate description of reality, focus on facts, common purpose of social criticism, a concise and sober style, predilection for the novel, individual characters, omniscient narrator, didacticism, linear structure, meticulous descriptions, and approximation of colloquial language.
Naturalism
Naturalism is a literary current that unfolded during the last third of the nineteenth century in France.
Realism and Naturalism in Spain
The triumph of realism in Spain was late, but naturalism was known quite early, although writers did not fully accept the idea of turning literature into a science.
Fernán Caballero
In his works, romantic elements abound.
Pedro de Alarcón
A pre-realist writer of romance prose, his best novel of manners was The Hat of Three Corners.
Benito Pérez Galdós (Galdós)
Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, May 10, 1843, and died in Madrid, January 4, 1920, he was a Spanish novelist, playwright, and columnist. He is one of the leading representatives of the realist novel of the nineteenth century and one of the most important writers in the Spanish language. In 1870, he published his first novel, The Golden Fountain.
Leopoldo Alas (Clarín)
Born in Zamora, April 25, 1852, and died in Oviedo, June 13, 1901, he was a famous Spanish writer. His masterpiece is La Regenta (1884-85). The Judge’s Wife is noted for its wealth of characters and secondary levels and the use of the technique of stream of consciousness, while the portrait of the protagonist was delicately blurred and vague. Moreover, the fall of the provincial lady occurs between two very different figures: the most seductive city lover who has just triumphed, and a canon of the cathedral. The portrait of this canon is key to the book.
Antonio Machado
Born on July 26, 1875, in Seville. He was the second of five children in a liberal family. His father, Antonio Machado Álvarez “Demófilo,” a friend of Joaquín Costa and Francisco Giner de los Ríos, published numerous studies on Andalusian and Galician folklore. His mother was Ana Ruiz. His grandfather, Antonio Machado, was a physician and professor of Natural Sciences. His work starts with Solitudes (1903), which was written between 1899 and 1902. In this short collection, many personal traits that characterize his later lyrical poetry are already noticeable. His work moves away from the modernist conception of form and is merely the sum of the arts.
Pío Baroja
Born in San Sebastián, December 28, 1872, and died in Madrid, October 30, 1956. As a student, he was known for his lack of interest more than talent, and by then he displayed a grumpy, cantankerous, and discontented character, disliking his teachers and being hypercritical of everything. No profession appealed to him, and he did not mind typing. He read German philosophy. In 1900, he published his first book, a collection of short stories, Lives Bleak, mostly composed in Cestona about people of that region and his own experiences as a doctor.
The World After World War I
Human sacrifice was a major factor that exhausted the Western countries during World War I. Spain remained neutral, and as a consequence, there was a boom in exports and extraordinary business profits. This led to the general strike of 1917, which was suppressed by the army. The end of the war brought economic recession. The monarchy and the army tried to find a solution to the crisis.
Noucentisme
It is a cultural movement of the second decade of the twentieth century in Spain that takes its name from the new century and is opposed to art as something old and outdated. Characteristics include: rationalism, anti-romanticism, defense of pure art, intellectual aristocracy, and stylistic care.
European Avant-Gardes and Their Development in Spain
Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism, Ultraism.
The Prose of the Era
The intellectual character of the writers and the abundance of Noucentists among them led to the great development of the essay genre.