Realism and Naturalism in 19th-Century Spanish and European Literature
Realism and Naturalism in the 19th Century
The 19th century narrative was dominated by Realism and Naturalism, movements that coincided with the expansion of industrialization and the rise of the middle class. Narrators employed direct and indirect styles, as well as interior monologue, and Realism coincided with the Restoration period in Spain. Works by French authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, and English authors such as Charles Dickens, marked the transition from costumbrista, romantic and realist novels of the 15th to 17th centuries, with fantastic elements. The novel sought a static and objective representation of society through rigorous descriptions of everything.
First Generation of Spanish Realist Writers
The first generation included Fernán Caballero (Cecilia Böhl de Faber), Juan Valera, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón and José María de Pereda. The second generation included Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" and Armando Palacio Valdés. Benito Pérez Galdós stood out as the greatest novelist of the period.
Naturalism
In the last two decades of the century, Naturalism emerged, aiming to be a documentary record of the influence of biological and social environment on characters. Its main representatives were Emilio Pardo Bazán, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Émile Zola.
Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" (1852-1901)
Professor of law at the University of Oviedo, Clarín was a critic whose work was often debated in the press. His articles were collected in Clarín (1885). He was a lucid and critical writer, known for his acid satire and humor aimed at authors and works. His novel La Regenta (1884-1885) applied descriptive techniques and psychological analysis, and portrayed provincial life and the mediocrity of the inhabitants of Spanish society during the Restoration.
Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920)
Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Galdós moved to Madrid in 1862. His work offers a thorough vision of the political, economic and spiritual problems of 19th-century Spanish society. His 77 novels are grouped into: Novelas de la primera época, Episodios nacionales, and Novelas españolas contemporáneas (31 novels, from 1881, set in Madrid), which together constitute a realistic portrait of the whole of Spanish society. Notable works include La Sustitución, Doña Perfecta, Fortunata y Jacinta (1887), Misericordia (1897) and Nazarín (1895). His works reflect the trends of the era, with extensive documentation and psychological treatment of characters, using appropriate language for each.
In Miau, Ramón Bringas, a modest civil servant, is controlled economically and tyrannically by his wife Rosalía, who maintains an appearance above their means. She spends beyond their income and falsifies the accounts, until they are morally and economically ruined.
Émile Zola (1840-1902)
Zola was the initiator of Naturalism, an analytical literature grounded in scientific principles. He demonstrated the influence of genetics and physiological and industrial environments. His best-known works include Nana, Germinal and the cycle Les Rougon-Macquart.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Flaubert represents Realism. His novels are characterized by the psychological analysis of their characters. Madame Bovary tells the story of Emma Bovary, a frustrated woman married to Charles, a mediocre doctor, whose bourgeois life produces dissatisfaction; her affair with Rodolphe leads her to suicide. The novel criticizes the bourgeoisie. L'Éducation sentimentale and Salammbô, with its splendid evocations of Carthaginian civilization, complete his output.
Russian Realist Novelists
Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Gambler, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov. Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Kreutzer Sonata.
The Turn of the Twentieth Century
Spain was enriched by the power of the bourgeoisie and landowners, while agrarian and industrial proletariat oppositions grew, and anarchism spread. There was an extensive move towards socialism and a desire for renewal. Writers opposed the previous literary movement, Modernism (which pursued a renewed aesthetic, led by Rubén Darío and Ramón del Valle-Inclán with Sonatas), and the Generation of '98, which questioned the essence of Spain and its history and literary works. Its key authors include Miguel de Unamuno (San Manuel Bueno, mártir, Niebla), Pío Baroja, Antonio Machado and Azorín.
Pío Baroja (1872-1956)
Baroja practiced medicine in rural areas but soon devoted himself to writing. He wrote for periodicals and social and cultural journals, denouncing political delays. He published in a way of perfection and wrote some 50 works. His tendencies were anarchist and pessimistic, yet he was vitalist in his defense of sincerity, freedom and justice, and he described with tenderness characters who were exploited and humble.
His novels have no rigid structure, lack classical resources, and accumulate unconnected episodes, descriptions of characters and contemporary anecdotes. They portray environments and seek the poor workers and anarchists who fight for their ideals, as in La lucha por la vida (1904). Zalacaín el aventurero (1909) describes Basque customs, Shanti Andía (1911) recounts the lives and efforts of sailors, and El árbol de la ciencia (1911) expresses through the novel his vision of human life.
His novels convey a vivid feeling of reality, with pleasant storytelling, direct and simple language, and expressive sentences. Without rhetoric, they offer a bitter vision of his world, with uprooted human characters searching for an ideology to guide them.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Kafka was born in Prague but wrote in German. He studied and worked in administrative law, was a tireless reader, frequented cultural circles, and was committed to equality and social policy activities. He died of tuberculosis forty years later, after Max Brod published his works: El proceso (1925), El castillo (1926), and La metamorfosis (1915), which tells the story of a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning transformed into a giant insect. Thomas Mann shares the same opposition to violence.
English Modernists
Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce (1882-1941) were born in a modest home in Dublin. Joyce studied at the Jesuit University College, learned French, Italian and German, and developed the interior monologue and the epiphanies. He wrote Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922).