Spanish Literature: Romanticism and Realism
Romanticism
Characteristics of Romantic Literature
Romantic literature is characterized by the emergence of new subjects and new forms.
- New Issues: Extreme pessimism, love as an absolute passion, the reflection of human feelings in nature, the idealization of the past, and interest in the exotic and picturesque.
- New Forms: Mixtures of prose and verse, the blending of literary genres, plays that break the rules, and prose with historicist traditions.
Mariano José de Larra
Born in Madrid in 1809, Mariano
Read More19th Century Spain: Romanticism and Realism
The Nineteenth Century: Romanticism and Realism in Spain
The first half of the nineteenth century in Spain presents a spectacle of a country struggling to mature against the backdrop of a new European spirit. This period was significantly marked by Romanticism.
The Romantic Movement
Romanticism was a political and cultural movement that affected Spain and other European countries. It reacted against the rationalism of the eighteenth century (preromanticism). The Romantics inquired into the unknown
Read MoreThe Poetic Legacy of Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez
The Poetry of Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez
Antonio Machado was representative of the literary Generation of ’98, surpassing the poetic tradition through symbolic procedures and creating poetry of great excitement and insight. Machado defends poetry as “the dialogue of a man with his time,” emphasizing poetic intuition experienced temporally, unlike logical thinking based on concepts.
Key Themes in Machado’s Poetry
1. The Concept of Time
Machado was interested in time as lived experience,
Read MoreRomanticism: Origins, Characteristics, and Key Figures
Romanticism: Origins and Key Aspects
Romanticism was a cultural and artistic movement that emerged in Germany and England in the late 18th century and spread throughout Europe.
Origins and Influences
In Germany, the Sturm und Drang movement advocated for absolute creative freedom, championed Shakespeare, and celebrated medieval poetry as a reflection of the national spirit. The Weimar Classicism group (Herder, Grimm, etc.) also played a significant role. Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther caused
Read MoreModernism and the Generation of ’98: Key Aspects
Modernism
Modernism is a facelift that collects and presents the vital innovative attitudes, philosophical and artistic ends of the nineteenth century, resulting from a crisis of conscience, a bourgeois reaction against materialism and the utilitarian spirit of the time. Modernism developed between 1885 and 1915. It expresses beauty with a new sensitivity on the issues and a new, very precious language, then becomes more intimate and essential and less contrived. It is a movement that has different
Read MoreRealism in Literature: A Historical Perspective
REALISTIC FICTION: Realism was an artistic and literary trend that developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. From the standpoint of literature, the most representative manifestations correspond to the narrative genre.
The fullness of the realist novel was in the 1880s, in which the contributions of naturalism helped shape the new Spanish and most important creations of the era. In the later part of the nineteenth century can point to other movements such as modernism.
Realism: Realism
Read More