Modernist and Avant-Garde Novels in Spanish Literature

The Modernist Novel and the Generation of '98

The renewal of modernist aesthetics extends to the novel. Its themes are consistent with those of poetry. The idealization and stylization of reality are the basis of the Sonatas by Valle-Inclán and Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez.

The Generation of '98 reacts against the "vulgar" style of realism and takes, in some cases, the thematic and ideological legacy of naturalism (Baroja) and, in others, the intellectual and enormous burden of German existentialist thought (Unamuno).

Miguel de Unamuno

His novels are existential in nature, picking up on his philosophical worldview and the author's concerns: the conflict between creator and character in Mist, the feeling of frustrated maternity in Aunt Tula, and religious transcendence and immortality in San Manuel Bueno, Martyr.

They also reflect his intention to renew the language. Unamuno calls it Nivola. The author allows his characters to act according to their own law in Nivola. The language is much more intellectual, and the author abandons the order of objective reality to handle it at will.

Pío Baroja

He always maintains a radical pessimism about nature and humanity. Thus, his work is critical of everything. But Baroja does not blame a particular human group, but a globally corrupt society. He distrusts social or religious organizations, political parties, or collective initiatives because he conceives of life as a struggle in which the weak always lose.

Baroja combines the despair and anguish of Romanticism collected by modernism, the deterministic vision of the natural world, and recognizable forms of impressionism in descriptive environments. Baroja, unlike realists, creates diffuse profiles of environments and barely delves into the psychology of the characters.

Among his titles, grouped mostly in trilogies, are: The Way of Perfection, The Quest, Zalacaín the Adventurer, The Concerns of Shanti Andía, and The Tree of Knowledge.

Ramón del Valle-Inclán

Valle begins with the Sonatas, masterpieces in exuberant Modernism. They recreate the decadent comings and goings of Don Juan, the refined and perverse Marquis of Bradomín. The Carlist War belongs to the same style of idealization.

In the second period, from 1920, Valle's modernism is oriented towards the stylization of the classic rules, deforming the grotesque, which leads to the limit of expressionistic realism, as it aims to unmask reality through grotesque deformation and discover its authentic image.

Tirano Banderas is a grotesque novel that parodies the dictator and moves forward in time sequence with its structure and cinematic view. The Iberian Circle goes from Elizabeth II to Alfonso XIII, comprising, among others, The Court of Miracles.

The Noucentisme Novel

Gabriel Miró

A faithful follower of Modernism in the accumulation of feelings and the idealization of the landscape. His most representative works are The Cemetery of Cherries and Our Father San Daniel.

Ramón Pérez de Ayala

Whose important works are Belarmino and Apolonio and Tiger Juan.

The Avant-Garde Novel

The novel is identified with avant-garde formalism, and its characteristics are evident in experimentation. These are evident in Serna. The outcry is the basis of narrative art from his early novels (The Unlikely Doctor, The Black and White Widow), but it is accentuated from The Spikenard and his masterpiece, The Lost Man.

The Novel of the Generation of '27

Two trends should be noted:

• The avant-garde novel, which takes an intellectual stance for experimentation. Max Aub should be remembered with Geography Fable and Jusep Torres Campalans, Francisco Ayala with the tales of The Boxer and an Angel, and Rosa Chacel with Station, Round Trip.
• The social realist novel, in contrast to the previous one. Its authors are romantic revolutionaries who write a literature of testimony and denunciation. The capital figure is Ramón J. Sender, who in exile wrote Requiem for a Spanish Peasant.