Key Literary Movements and Styles in Spanish Literature

Conceptismo

This movement is particularly concerned with the fund (content). It focuses on the association of ideas and ingenious wit in the telling. The author typically uses a flat lexicon to excite the mind and displays a preference for a short, choppy rhythm. Its main representatives are Quevedo, Lope, Gracián, and de Vega.

Culteranismo

This style is concerned with the form of expression, where the content of the compositions is minimal. It aims to create a sensory world of beauty, grounded by the power of the word's phonic quality rather than its meaning. It uses resources such as:

• Hellenisms
• Latinisms
• Neologisms
• Metaphors

Its style is sumptuous, and this movement reached its maximum representation in the verse of Góngora.

Realism

The author seeks an exact reproduction of reality based on an objective method of observation and documentation. It combats romantic subjectivism and rejects fantastic elements and excessive sentimental effusions. The most cultivated genre is the novel.

Key Characteristics of Realism

• Set in the time of the author.
• The writer becomes a chronicler of everyday life.
• Contains many descriptions and pauses in the painting of characters.
• Each character speaks according to their social condition.
• Shows concern for the middle classes.

Major European representatives: Balzac, Flaubert.
Main Spanish representatives: Galdós, Valera, Clarín.

Romanticism

A literary style and way of life that manifested in Europe during the first half of the 19th century.

Core Principles

• Exaltation of the Self: Subjectivism and individualism.
• Extreme Nationalism: Exaltation of popular and national values.
• Search for Freedom: Opposition to norms and the triumph of imagination and sensibility.
• Intense Idealism: Disagreement with the world; nature suits the moods of the author.
• Irrationalism: Obsession with fate, a taste for the sentimental and macabre, and mysterious blind inspiration.

The romantic writer considers themselves a chosen individual.

The Picaresque Novel

The protagonist is a rogue—a youngster without parental honor, a servant of many masters, a clever thief, a disgraced husband, and an antihero.

Defining Features

• Autobiographical form.
• Episodes related only by the protagonist.
• Itinerant character in a mobile space.
• Presentation of human types belonging to the lowest social strata.
• Censorship of social vices.
• Emphasis on realism and verisimilitude.