Analysis of Key Spanish Literary Works: Lorca, Mendoza, and Rivas

Analysis of Key Spanish Literary Works

The House of Bernarda Alba (20th Century) by Federico García Lorca

The House of Bernarda Alba is Lorca's last great drama. It exemplifies the theatrical style he developed during the final stage of his career. Perhaps the most important ethical lesson of the work is that moral codes should not supersede the needs of individuals, and society must adapt its principles to accommodate them. Federico García Lorca demonstrates that outdated rules lead to unfortunate situations for women. Bernarda creates and enforces a morality she inherited.

The House of Bernarda Alba is simple and severe in the following aspects:

• The structure consists of three acts.
• The language is generally medium register, although vulgar and popular variants appear.
• The dramatic fiction takes place in three spaces inside a house.
• Time is also closed: the story begins in the late morning and ends at night.
• The characters are all women.
• The dramatic action progresses in a spiral, i.e., the tension increases as situations repeat.

Despite its sobriety, it is Lorca's most controversial play. Its symbolic nature has led to various interpretations. This symbolism is consistent with the realism of a play in which lifelike characters suffer the same passions, weaknesses, and misfortunes as real human beings.

Savolta (Early 20th Century) by Eduardo Mendoza

Savolta focuses on a period of recent history that was still provocative in Spain during the late Franco regime. The novel is composed of two parts, divided into five and ten chapters, respectively. The first part mixes three types of texts:

1. Documents presented as evidence in an attempt to clarify a trial about events that occurred between 1917 and 1918.
2. An omniscient third-person narration.
3. A first-person narrative by Javier Miranda, who tells his version of events.

In the second part, documents related to the official investigation almost completely disappear, but the dual narration continues in the first person and third-person omniscient. The scope of Mendoza's novel is threefold: existential, social, and artistic. The existential significance lies in the protagonist's discomfort and disillusionment. In social terms, there is a complete and accurate picture of the various contending forces at a historic moment. In the arts, the author's imaginative fertility, technical virtuosity, and richness of nuances in the devices and language are evident.

The combination of playfulness and seriousness, irony and humor, is compatible with a piercing sadness. In short, Savolta satisfies the reader on several levels: it is a particularly clever novel, full of human depth and sensitivity, skillfully constructed, and singularly exciting and enjoyable.

Don Alvaro or the Force of Fate (19th Century) by the Duke of Rivas

In Don Alvaro or the Force of Fate, the Duke of Rivas blends classical and romantic elements. The five acts, typical of neoclassical theater, have a double pace: slow and sluggish in depictions of manners, quick and abrupt when tension is placed on the plot. The play embraces the mixture of prose and verse, which contradicts the neoclassical aesthetic. The main theme, very much in line with romanticism, is fate, the "force of fate" that is exerted on the characters in the tragedies. The issue has many historical antecedents. Despite these precedents, Don Alvaro turned out to be revolutionary. Rivas applies several new resources to the thematic fund of previous tragedies. For example, he rolls back history to more recent times, closer to the audience.

So much passion, so much violence, so many deaths, accepted by convention, seemed extreme. Love and hate acquire extreme vehemence in Don Alvaro, which provides exceptional stress. The deaths, a key ingredient of all neoclassical tragedy, create an environment totally unknown to the tragedies, where mainly only affected the final catastrophe. Although the tone of the work is far from current sensitivity, it should not be considered a defect. It remains a milestone in the history of our literature and a clear break from the presets that somehow anticipates the ideas of creative freedom in our time.