Spanish Literature Before 1939: A Comprehensive Overview
ITEM 5. SPANISH NOVEL BEFORE 1939: Pio Baroja and Unamuno
1. OVERVIEW
1.1. The Novel at the Beginning of the Century
The realist and naturalist novel, heir to the narrative of the 19th century, enjoyed a wide audience in the early 20th century, highlighting in particular the work of Blasco Ibanez. They are the last gasps of Realism.
1.2. Revival of the Novel
With the publication in Spain in 1902 of The Will by Azorin, Way of Perfection: Love and Pedagogy Autumn Sonata by Unamuno, and Valle Inclan’s works, a new epoch of departure from realism began, starting the new century novel of the 20th century.
1.3. The Novel Novecento
Ramon Perez de Ayala, Gabriel Miro. The first cultivated the intellectual and experimental novel (Tigre Juan), while Miro created a novel of deep lyricism.
1.4. The Avant-Garde
In the twenties, a novel related to the avant-garde was produced, represented by Ramon Gomez de la Serna and Benjamin Jarne.
1.5. The Novel in the Thirties
The novel of the thirties tended toward social engagement and rehumanization, highlighting Ramon J. Sender, Francisco Ayala, and Rosa Chacel.
2. Pio Baroja
2.1. Life and Personality
Born in San Sebastian in 1872. In Madrid, he studied medicine to become a doctor, but having little time, he gave himself completely to his literary vocation. Baroja was a lonely, embittered, and pessimistic man.
2.2. Ideology and Existential Gloom
His work falls perfectly in line with existential pessimism.
- Baroja was distinguished by his radical religious skepticism.
- To Baroja, the world is meaningless. Life to him is absurd.
- His political ideology is marked by the same skepticism.
2.3. His Conception of the Novel
Most of his novel concept is:
- The novel is for him “a multiform genre, protein, all-encompassing (open book).
- A consequence of this is his professed disregard for the composition, even claiming that a novel can be no argument.
- The invention, imagination and observation are for him the supreme qualities of the novelist.
- Baroja admits that his works “do not want to test a thesis.”
- Ultimately, what Baroja called “lack of composition” or “disorganization” are nothing but particular ways of composing and arranging for the novel material.
2.4. The Style
Although its obvious grammatical inaccuracies, which he attributed to his Basque origin, Azorin said Baroja had a “great style”.
- His style is consistent with his ideal of spontaneity narrative.
- The result is a quick prose, nervous and vivid.
- Their style is a tone “sour”, which corresponds to its bitterness.
- Preferences for the short sentence and brief paragraph.
- Vividness and amenity of the story, and special attention to their descriptions.
- Unsurpassed teacher in conversational authenticity of the dialogues.
2.5. His Work. Novels.
Thirty-four novels are grouped into trilogies, the most important:
- – Basque Land, where Zalacain adventurer (1909) highlights.
- – The Fantastic Life, highlighting Way of Perfection (1902).
- – The Struggle for Life, highlighting the search (1904).
- “The Race” belongs to the tree of knowledge.
- – The Sea, where Concerns of Shanti Andia (1911) highlights.
Baroja also wrote many short stories and novellas, essays, biographies, and even several works in dialogue form. Memoirs are exciting, that go under the general title Since the Last Turn of the Road.
2.6. Significance of Baroja
Baroja is a very representative figure of the sensitivity and the spiritual atmosphere of his generation. It is the quintessential novelist of contemporary Spanish literature, for his gifts as a storyteller, his power, and strength building testimonial.
3. Miguel de Unamuno
3.1. Life and Personality
Born in Bilbao in 1864. He studied philosophy and literature in Madrid, winning in 1891 the Chair of Greek at the University of Salamanca. From 1924 to 1930, he was exiled for his opposition to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Later he was deputy for the republic. With the military uprising of ’36, he was confined to his home where he died suddenly.
- His personality is very strong and torn, living always in constant conflict with itself, never finding peace.
- The ideological evolution deserves to be clarified. After several youth lost faith crisis. Socialist ideas expressed in 1892 and joined the PSOE. A new crisis in 1897 plunged him into the problem of death and nothingness. In their ongoing discussion between faith and unbelief, their agony and anguish speaks all his work.
3.2. Novels and “Nivola”
Figure Unamuno and the most determined reformers of the early century novel.
- Began, however, for a historical novel about the last Carlist War: Peace in War (1897), a novel that took more than twelve years of preparation. Unamuno said that was the job of “oviparous novelist” (the long incubation creation).
- But it soon became a “novelist viviparous, i.e., fast delivery, who writes what comes out. This line is Love and Pedagogy (1902). It is a “novel of ideas.”
- The formal innovations of the work done to some critics say that this was a novel. So defiantly Unamuno nivola subtitularia his next work of fiction: Fog (1914), undoubtedly his masterpiece in the genre.
- Since then, the protagonists Unamunian are “agonists” men fighting and battling death and dissolution of his personality. Thus we have Abel Sanchez (1917) and La tia Tula (1921).
- Regarding the technical innovations of his novels is worth highlighting the ease constructive viviparous own this creation, and descriptive parsimony.
3.3. Unamuno’s Style
It is a language of intellectual fighter. A detached style of old rhetoric, though his personal rhetoric. Unamuno prefer a style naked in front of the stylists who dress in finery. For the density of ideas, the emotional intensity, not elegance. Its internal contradictions are reflected in his taste for the paradoxes and antitheses.
3.4. San Manuel Bueno, Martyr
This short novel is considered the most characteristic and perfect within the narrative of the author. In his prologue Unamuno said: “My conscience had put into it my whole tragic sense of everyday life.” For his date (1931), brings together the views of Unamuno old to problems that had not stopped gripped.
ITEM 6. SPANISH DRAMA BEFORE 1939: Valle Inclan and Garcia Lorca
1. OVERVIEW
- The bourgeois public taste are of little demand.
- It is a poor theater, static anchored in the repetition of the same formulas.
- Little creative stimulus, some authors less conforming (Unamuno, Azorin …) try to break this trend revealing itself to the commercial theater.
1.1. THEATER COMMERCIAL SUCCESS
The premieres of Reality (1892), by Benito Perez Galdos, El nido ajeno (1894) and Juan Jose Jacinto Benavente (1895) Joaquin Dicenta, tried to enter a theater close to that of European naturalism, but the relative success of Galdos and Dicenta not have continuity. Benavente would be responsible for shaping the new theater, folding to the demands of the public.
The comedy Benaventine .- The failure of the alien nest led him to write plays more in tune with public tastes. The food of beasts (1898) is his first big hit and since then Benavente merely polishing the structure of his theater To ensure acceptance of the spectators and tirelessly repeated the formula. Their plots show some conflicting problems. Dialogue predominates elegant, natural and witty. The scenic spots in which the action is allows the classification of his work into four groups:
- The interiors bourgeois citizens, with titles like The corny (1901).
- The interiors cosmopolitan conza Saturday night (1903).
- The interior provinces, such as Pepa Doncel (1928).
- The interior rural, loves Lady (1908) and the unloved (1913).
Along with the unloved, Vested interests (1907) is his most valued today. It is an original and unclassifiable.
The comedy of manners. Mixture aspects of the genre known as zarzuela and the boy, with emphasis on the picturesque environment of certain Spanish regions. It is characterized by the creation of typical characters, by their language and humorous avulgarado, ideologically, for its conservatism.
- Carlos Arniches is best known author of farces, a specialist in folk customs in Madrid. His most successful farces are the saint of the hydra (1898) and The Flower of the district (1919). Since 1916, Arniches attempted a new genre, grotesque tragicomedy, with Mademoiselle de Trevelez (1916).
- The brothers Serafin and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero wrote in collaboration paintings, sketches and comedy set Traditionalists in an unreal and topical Andalusia. The most outstanding are those of Cain (1908) and Malvaloca (1912).
- Pedro Munoz Seca specialized in Astrakhan, boy and gender mix of vaudeville, highlighting the work of Don Mendo’s Revenge (1918).
The poetic drama. It is a type of verse drama characterized by historical issues and ideological conservatism. It nostalgically evoke past events that are considered exemplary by their burden of traditional values. Eduardo Marquina stand with the daughters of the Cid (1908) and In Flanders, the sun has set (1910) and Francisco Villaespesa with the castle of pearls (1911). The brothers Manuel and Antonio Machado wrote jointly in this line La Lola is going to ports (1929). Meanwhile, Jose Maria Peman impatient author of The Divine (1933), extends beyond this current war.
1.2. THEATER REFRESHING and Margin
Faced with the drama staged successfully in other scenarios concocted did not obtain the applause of the audience, the so-called innovative, reacting against the convention of realistic theater. The theater did not succeed for two reasons:
- The creations of the perpetrators were often unrepresentable, a ‘theater to be read” as was described theater Valle by specialists.
- The audience comprising these parts, usually young and educated, was a minority.
The theater around generation 98.
- Miguel de Unamuno sees the drama as the most appropriate tool for presenting human problems that haunt him. Stresses his work Fedra (1911)
- Azorin developed his theatrical vocation especially critical. His works are based on dialogue, conflict and suffer lack of statism. His most notable is The Invisible (1928) and is a short trilogy about the distress before death. Often the appearance of subconscious elements in his compositions, along the lines of Surrealism at the time.
- Barcelona Jacinto Great is characterized by the use of poetic prose and the historical, biblical and literary tradition. Stresses his The Lord of Pygmalion (1921).
- Also Ramon Gomez de la Serna tried writing plays than commercial.
The theater in the Generation of 27. The authors of 27 attempted to create a new theater audience closer to the people. The refusal of employers to all kinds of experimentation and limited interest of the public made the most plays is not released.
- Rafael Alberti linked his theater to the guidelines of the work involved, designing the stage as a way to fight for awareness and dissemination of the ideals, as in Night of War in the Prado Museum (1956); In other works sense prevails with a strong poetic symbolism as in the galliard (1945).
- Pedro Salinas wrote in exile, among other works, The Sleeping Beauty.
- Miguel Hernandez writes social melodramas like The farmer of more air (1937).
- Alejandro Casona began his playwriting in 1934 with The beached mermaid. then in exile, wrote some famous works that would premiere first outside of Spain as La dama del alba (1944), La barca sin pescador (1945) and Trees die standing (1949).
- Max Aub written after the theater during the war propaganda begins in exile of maturity stage focused on the horrors of war. San Juan (1943), his best drama, reflecting the drift of a ship full of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis.
- Enrique Jardiel Poncela be called to renew the comic theater with works such as Four hearts with brake and reverse (1936).
2. THEATER Valle
Ramon del Valle Pena was born in Villanueva de Arosa (Pontevedra) in 1866. Began up having to leave law school because of family problems. In 1891 began signing his journalistic under the pseudonym of Valle-Inclan. In 1895 he moved to Madrid where he is known for his eccentricities, a few years later married to Josephine White.
He died in Santiago de Compostela on 5 January 1936. The first theater in Valley falls within the modernist, with some idealized and aesthetic works: Cuento de Abril (1910).
Then test other ways: The mythical cycle, with the Comedy barbarian stories that take place in the mythical rural Galicia. The culmination of this cycle is Divinas palabras (1920). The inexhaustible artistic quest led to his initial Valle decadent modernism to the creation of a personal genre:
The scarecrow .- Luces de bohemia Valley With names a literary genre based on the systematic deformation of character and values denouncing contemporary Spanish society. The characters (real or fictional) are grotesques in a grotesque world. The use of contrasts (painful, grotesque, tragic-comic …), the richness of language, theatrical stage directions, the many characters and the continuing changes in space and time between the scenes are other formal features of the nonsensical. Tirano Banderas The Iberian circle other works are grotesque.
3. THEATER LORCA
Federico Garcia Lorca created the true poetic drama. His dramatic production express in depth the problems of life and history through a language loaded with connotations. Moreover, his plays are becoming increasingly important in other components such as music, dance and art.
1. Early Dramas
They are related to modern drama: The Curse of the Butterfly (1919) and Mariana Pineda (1923); The latter is a historical drama in verse where heroin was executed in Granada by embroidering a reign of Ferdinand VII liberal banner.
2. Farces for Puppet and People
Lorca is the author of four farces that develop the conflict arising from the marriage between the old and young, among the first we have the Tragicomedy of Don Cristobal and Rosita Password (1923) and Don Cristobal Retablillo. Among the people we farces for The Shoemaker prodigious (1929) and Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden (1929).
3. Comedy Impossible
Under this designation meet three comedies: The public (1933), avant-garde; So spend five years (1931) dealing with the existential drama of a young and Untitled comedy, which is known only the first act.
4. Tragedies and Dramas
In Lorquian lar tragedies, the argument is of little importance, there are few main characters and involving choirs. They thrive in a rural setting in which natural forces imposed a tragic destiny. They emphasize Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936).