Essential Spanish Literary Movements and Characteristics

Realism

Realism reflects reality. It is the era of the novel, which shows the avatars of the new middle class.

Key Features

• Focus: Focuses on the bourgeoisie.
• Objectivity: Making scientific models.
• Style: Simple and clear prose.
• Social Criticism: A noble character always fails.
• Detailed Description: Description very focused on the characters; it often features detailed and customary environments and characters.

Generación del 27

A group of authors who mix avant-garde elements.

Features

• Formal Renewal: They use a cultured lexicon away from common poetic terms.
• Metric Renovation: They seek freedom in metric forms.
• Subject: Varied themes such as love, death, and fate.

Stages

There are three stages:

• Vanguard: Influence of European avant-garde poetry and a tendency toward pure poetry.
• Commitment: Role of existential concerns and feelings.
• Rupture: After the Civil War, the group broke up into those in exile (themes of paradise lost and nostalgia) and those who stayed in Spain (poetry of social and political commitment).

Featured Poets

Pedro Salinas, Gerardo Diego, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and Luis Cernuda.

Modernism

Modernism is an artistic movement that evolved from aesthetics to social and existential concerns. Modernists adopt principles of Parnassianism and Symbolism. Parnassianism involves technical perfection and escaping from reality, while Symbolism employs all sorts of symbols and images to evoke reality through language.

Features

• Places: Resort to exotic places, unreal or remote in time.
• Metric: Adapted metric forms and used old French stanzas.
• Style: In their poems, they mix senses and create beautiful synesthesias.

Spanish Authors

• Poetry: Manuel Machado, Antonio Machado, and Juan Ramón Jiménez.
• Novel: Ramón María del Valle-Inclán.
• Theater: Eduardo Marquina and Valle-Inclán.

Romanticism

From the late 18th century, Europe shows a certain weariness with the rules of the Enlightenment movement. People appealed to imagination, dreams, and the irrational, which is the basis of this new movement.

Characteristics

Selfishness and subjectivism, freedom, nationalism, religiosity, dynamic nature, irrationalism, evasion, and love.