Romanticism: Characteristics, Authors, and Literary Movement

Romanticism: A Literary Movement

The Romantic movement began in the 1830s with the return of exiled liberals. The Romantic era sought to change the world, but when desires went unfulfilled, feelings of frustration and pessimism arose, leading to a search for escape.

This cultural, artistic, and literary movement started in Germany and spread throughout Europe and America in the nineteenth century. It is characterized by a desire for innovation, the defense of freedom, and the exaltation of feelings.

Key Features of Romanticism

Thematic Features

1. Freedom: Exaltation of freedom and a taste for characters that symbolize that freedom, such as pirates, the condemned, and devils.
2. Feelings: Love that defies social conventions to reach the beloved.
3. Landscape: Landscapes that reflect feelings, such as ruins, storms, high mountains, and mysterious places.
4. The Mysterious and Supernatural: Elements like the supernatural.
5. Escape: Avoiding reality by escaping to other eras like the Middle Ages, exotic places, or even death.
6. Individualism: Reflected in the collective taste for traditions and popular nationalism.

Expressive Characteristics

Focuses on how to write with freedom, rejecting rules and mixing prose and verse, comedy and tragedy in the same poem (Polarimetry).

• Characteristic Vocabulary: Technical and lugubrious.
• Theatrical Language: Full of questions and exclamations.
• Lyric Poetry: The most favored genre.

Lyric Poetry

Espronceda: Life and Work

Born between 1808 and 1809, Espronceda had rebel liberal ideas and strong political commitments, leading to exile in Europe. He had forbidden loves with Teresa.

His fundamental works include The Student of Salamanca and The Devil World.

Nineteenth-Century Literary Movement

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Romanticism spanned Europe, giving way to Realism in the second half of the century.

Century Movement Characteristics

• Neoclassicism (18th Century): Reason, Greek and Roman artistic models, didactic intention, and adherence to norms.
• Romanticism (1st half of 19th Century): Feelings, freedom, and no didactic intention.
• Realism (2nd half of 19th Century): Objective reflection of reality and critical intention.

Society and Culture in the 1st Half of the Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century was a century of revolutions, marked by abrupt changes:

1. Economic Revolution: Industrial Revolution.
2. Social Revolution: Accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
3. Political Revolution: Transition from the old regime to new regimes, with conservatives compared to liberals.
4. Cultural Revolution: Romanticism.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Life

Born in Seville (1836-1870), Bécquer led a romantic life marked by hardship, unhappy love affairs, and an early death.

Work

His most important work, Rhymes and Legends, was published after his death.

Rhymes: Consist of poems composed by topic (poetry, love, hate, color).

The most common rhetorical figures are metaphors and representative elements, such as anaphora and parallelism.

Metaphors: Polarimetry, assonance, and short rhyme poems.

The Legends: Traditional stories with fantastic elements but also lyrical narrative elements.

Commentary on a Love Text

Theme: Heartbreak and disappointment, with the theme of impossible love.

Structure: Two parts: the first identifies love with nature, and the second speaks only of lovers.

Nature is where romance is born, with a favorite landscape of wilderness in freedom without human control.

Rhetorical Figures: Alliteration with the 'rr' sound throughout the poem, imitating a storm.

Romantic Characteristics: The landscape reflects feelings, and the beloved shows a romantic landscape (the storm at sea).

The exaltation of feelings with the subject of impossible love.

The clash between desire and reality (loving a woman, but that love could not be!).

Forms of Expression

• Creative freedom (Polarimetry).
• Theatricality seen in the use of exclamations.