Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism in Catalan Literature

Romanticism and Narrative Technique

Romanticism: The narrative style was rudimentary and filled with archaisms, vulgarisms and mixed with Castilianisms. The technique was often overloaded with moralizing.

Genres:

• Historical novels were popularized by Alexandre Dumas and Walter Scott, responding to a fashionable romantic historicism.
• Costumbrist novels: these were transitional works between costumisme and realism. The author builds a long narrative with greater psychological complexity in characters, plausible arguments and an attempt to reflect an idealized reality.
• Costumbrist articles: these were habitually published in the satirical press. They described environments, typical characters and locations of the popular classes.
• The painting: it has its origin in the costumbrist article and a thread of customs.
• Stories were narratives with environmental descriptions and flat characters, drawn from plans.
• Feuilleton novel: a sentimental narrative generated in characters where good and evil are clearly defined, living dramatic situations from which they often fail. The scenes are highly dramatic, with a complicated and episodic plot.

Realism

Realism was opposed to the romantic narrative of the nineteenth century, recreating the past in a historicist manner. This proposal was formulated by the French Balzac in The Human Comedy and also reveals the human side.

Realist authors are called thesis writers: the author tries to demonstrate and denounce through the narration. This demonstration is possible thanks to the detailed description of characters and environments.

Naturalism

Naturalism: The naturalist novel, as acknowledged by Émile Zola, was a revolution and a surpassing of realism in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was the result of applying the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte and the scientific eagerness of the era, which would revolutionize experimentalism, natural sciences and medicine.

Narcís Oller

Narcís Oller began writing in Spanish, but the consistency of his realism and his relationships with writers of the Renaixença led him to adopt Catalan, producing his best works:

• La papallona (1882): Toneta, a poor orphan, is seduced and abandoned by a papallona (a high-society seducer). In the final chapter she becomes a prostitute.
• L'escanyapobres (1884): In Pratbell, the widow Maria Xirinacs lives with her son Oleguer, who dies through the guilt of a usurer. In the end, money matters.
• La febre d'or (1890-92): Considered his best long novel. Written in three volumes, it tells the story of a family of minstrels who get rich thanks to a stock market bubble. It is a social satire of speculation, in which moral values are lost, and in the end the family is ruined.
• Pilar Prim (1906): A young widow falls in love with a man living in a sentimental situation, which goes against the social conditions of the era.

Oller uses narrative models from all periods of his era. In most cases the narrator is omniscient, with deep descriptions and psychological analysis.

Àngel Guimerà

Àngel Guimerà

Works: Romantic tragedies: His first works were characterized by a medieval setting, a subjective and legendary treatment, and romantic features. They are written in verse.

Realistic dramas: Between 1890 and 1900, Guimerà added realism to his works, achieving a more contemporary setting. The problems he raises connect the author with reality, and his works become social complaints.