Spanish Enlightenment, Romanticism and Language Analysis: Key Authors and Works

The Spanish Enlightenment (Ilustración), 18th Century

The Enlightenment (Ilustración) was a cultural movement that arose in France and spread across Europe. It was based on the power of reason and knowledge, and it implied a critique of the Old Regime. Its main goal was to defend the Encyclopedists' use of reason against false beliefs.

Characteristics

• Adoption of the experimental method, which discards inherited ideas, following the model of Newton.
• Travel as a means to know other cultures.
• Utilitarianism: what is useful, which drove the liberals and the pursuit of the happiness of people.
• Pedagogy: the Enlightenment sought to educate citizens and to elevate the cultural level of the people, and it criticized the excesses of didactic genres.

1. Prose

Writers were the most effective means to disseminate Enlightenment ideas. The most representative didactic prose works are those of Feijoo and Jovellanos.

Feijoo

A scientist who wanted to correct errors and fight popular beliefs with his works Teatro crítico universal and Cartas eruditas y curiosas. A Benedictine monk, he tried to develop Christianity against false miracles and superstitions of the modern age. He also defended the intellectual capacity of women.

Jovellanos

The most important representative of Spanish Enlightenment reformism, who tried to defend the need for reform and renovation. His works include verse, prose (with a didactic eagerness and reasoned arguments), the tragedy Pelayo, and social satire, in which he denounces the vices of the nobility and extols honesty, tolerance and fraternity.

Prose Memory: Espectáculos y diversiones públicas

This work explains the origin and main developments of spectacles and public diversions, from the Middle Ages onward. It also proposes measures to be taken regarding these spectacles, which were meant to educate the people and were based on the punishment of vices.

Epistolary Scaffold: Cartas marruecas

A collection of 90 letters that involves three characters:

1. Gazel: a young Moroccan Muslim who comes to Spain and decides to learn about its customs.
2. Ben-Beley: Gazel's former master, who remains in Morocco.
3. Nuño Núñez: a Christian Spaniard who helps Gazel and whose position prevents him from making certain critical judgments.

The three characters belong to different cultures, which makes it possible to compare perspectives. The work is written in the epistolary genre, with a simple and entertaining style.

Structure

1. Introduction: a discussion of the works written in Europe that criticized customs and that inspired Don Quixote.
2. Letters: the 90 letters of the three characters.
3. Note: a summary of the part based on another manuscript, which is supposed to be unreadable.
4. Literary protest: an imagined set of criticisms that the work may receive.

Topics: an analysis of the situation of 18th-century Spain, with a retrospective look at the causes that led to the present decadence.

Style: a variety of registers and linguistic uses, with expository, argumentative and descriptive discourse, narration, and dialogue to reproduce conversations.

Moratín: Neoclassical Comedy

Characteristics:

1. Imitation of reality, so that the public sees its own reflection.
2. Didacticism: comedy recommends virtues and criticizes vices.
3. Characters belong to the middle class.
4. Strict observance of the three unities.
5. Use of prose and verse.
6. Simple language.

Moratín cultivated all genres, but excelled in theater. His central theme is the criticism of three aspects of life: (1) arranged marriages, (2) the education of young people, and (3) the bad habits of the time.

El sí de las niñas

This play shows the main characteristics of Neoclassical comedy. It is written in prose, divided into three acts, and its action unfolds over a single day, with seven characters. Its theme is arranged marriage, which was a very current topic at the time.

Plot: Doña Francisca is a young woman educated in a convent who is obliged by her mother, Doña Irene, to marry Don Diego, a man much older than she is. Don Carlos, Diego's nephew, is in love with her. Their intention is to disguise their love and destabilize the social order, but the situation is finally discovered. Diego eventually supports their love.

Characters:

• Doña Francisca: docile, who accepts her mother's decision.
• Don Carlos: heroic, who faces dangers to win Francisca.
• Don Diego: tolerant, well-balanced, who acts as the voice of reason.
• Doña Irene: intransigent, characterized as very rigid.

Romanticism, 19th Century

Romanticism was an intellectual and cultural movement that began in Germany and England and reached Spain in the late 19th century.

Characteristics

1. Craving for freedom and rejection of norms (abandonment of the three unities, use of metrical variety in poetic genres and music).
2. Individualism: the "I" is the protagonist, often with an unlucky destiny. Subjectivism: romantic ideals clash with the reality of society, which provokes dissatisfaction.
3. Melancholy and nationalism: popular values are exalted, national traditions are recovered, and literature reflects customs.

Themes

1. Expression of feelings: melancholy, idealized love, solitude, and the impossible ideal.
2. Rebellion and frustration: when romantic ideals confront a hostile reality.
3. Nature: landscapes that correspond to the poet's feelings (sad landscapes, nocturnal scenes, mysteries).
4. The supernatural and the macabre: settings that evoke fear and death.

1. Prose

Romantic prose includes four genres:

1. Costumbrismo: portrays everyday reality and popular customs.
2. Historical novel: introduced under foreign influences (translations of works such as those of Victor Hugo).
3. Leyendas: Bécquer is its greatest representative. The 25 Leyendas are narratives set in romantic environments that combine love with mystery. Their protagonists pursue unattainable ideals.
4. Journalistic article: its leading figure is Larra.

Larra

Larra began publishing articles very early, as editor of several newspapers and periodicals. He married at the age of 20, but the marriage was unhappy, and he was disillusioned by politics, social life, and love, which led him to suicide.

Classification of his articles:

1. Costumbrista: criticism of customs, uses and society, lack of education, laziness, and diversions considered barbaric.
2. Political: Larra took a stand against Carlism because he supported liberal absolutism, tolerance and freedom.
3. Literary criticism: he supported innovations in theater and defended the freedom of the writer.

2. Romantic Theater

Characteristics:

1. Freedom of form: mixing of genres, polymetry, and disregard of the three unities; dynamism.
2. Characters: the protagonist is a hero (passionate, mysterious, a victim of an unlucky destiny); the heroine is tender, innocent, and capable of unlimited sacrifice.
3. Themes: love as absolute perfection, which can lead to death; and freedom, which often has political implications.

Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, Duque de Rivas

Plot: Don Álvaro is a mestizo protagonist, and Doña Leonor, in love with him, is pursued by an adverse destiny. Leonor's father opposes their relationship and her brother kills Álvaro. Later, Leonor's brother kills her, and Álvaro ends in suicide.

Style: it combines prose (in customs scenes) and verse. It is divided into five acts set in different cities and times, alternating in a manner characteristic of Romanticism that does not respect the classical rules.

Theme: love and destiny.

Don Juan Tenorio, Zorrilla

Plot: Don Juan is a seducer who transgresses norms, seduces women, and tries to circumvent the consequences of his actions. The innocence and love of a young woman save him from divine punishment.

Form: two parts. The first has four acts, in which Don Juan's adventures define his character (he is determined to live well, defying divine laws). The second reflects Romantic characteristics.

Second Half of Romantic Poetry

Characteristics of form: freedom in meter, combining verses and stanzas (polymetry and polystrophism).

Themes: feelings, rebellion, love, legends, and history.

Types:

• Narrative: recounts history, legends, and traditional stories from past times.
• Lyric: expresses feelings.

Espronceda: El estudiante de Salamanca

Espronceda wrote one of the first narrative poems about a traditional legend. It combines narrative with lyric and dramatic elements, with narration predominating.

Plot: Félix de Montemar is a young libertine and seducer who believes that Elvira, whom he left behind, is dead. He goes to conquer her. Elvira appears to him as a phantom and takes him to her burial. At the end, he is taken to the house by its specter.

Themes: the devil, the world, and the confusion of a world in which freedom is contested.

Bécquer: Rimas

Bécquer's work culminates Romantic poetry. The Rimas were published after his death by his friends. They are divided into parts: I-XI (poetry), XII-XXIX (love), XXX-LI (pain and disillusionment), LII-LXXVI (death).

Themes:

1. Poetry: simple, with a very natural expression.
2. Love: an unattainable ideal, a woman who is a mystery, with references to beautiful eyes, kisses, and sighs.
3. Disillusionment: pain, betrayal, and memory.
4. Death: existential anguish, in which the poet questions the destiny of human beings.

Form: it seems simple, but it is carefully elaborated. It uses spontaneous and natural language, with rhythm created through parallelisms and refrains. It creates images and mental symbols, and the adjectivation suggests a great deal. Hyperbaton dominates as a way of showing language.

Metrics: assonant rhyme, with free rhythm.

Rosalía de Castro

Works: Cantares gallegos and Follas novas, written in Galician, an innovative use of the language. These works reflect social themes, the pain of the people, and the denunciation of those who practice religion without charity.

En las orillas del Sar is written in Castilian. It expresses deep sadness, human solitude, and a religious sense, and it manifests a desire for death.

Form: verses of 16 and 18 syllables, fitted into new stanzas.

Morphological Analysis

Noun

Variable in gender (masculine, feminine) and number (singular, plural). Classification: concrete/abstract, individual/collective, animate/inanimate, countable/uncountable.

Pronoun

Classified by gender and number, and by type: personal (I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they), reflexive (me, you, him, her, us, you), reciprocal (us, you, each other), possessive (mine, yours, his, hers), demonstrative (this, that), relative (who, which), indefinite (some, nobody, something, anything, anyone, everything, too much), and interrogative/exclamative (who?, what!).

Determiner

Demonstrative (this, that, these, those), possessive (my, your, their, our), indefinite (some, too much, every, any), numeral (two, first), and interrogative/exclamative (what, how many), possessive (whose).

Adjective

Classified by gender and number, and by degree: positive (ugly, pretty), comparative (superiority: more... than; equality: as... as; inferiority: less... than), and superlative (absolute: very, extremely; relative: the most... of the).

Verb

Classified by conjugation, person, number, and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), and tense (present, preterite, future, imperfect, conditional). Non-personal forms: participle, gerund, infinitive.

Adverb

Of time, place, manner, quantity, affirmation, negation, doubt, and interrogation (where, how, when).

Conjunction

Coordinating: copulative (and), disjunctive (or), adversative (but), explicative (that is).
Subordinating: completive (that, if), consecutive (so that, therefore), causal (because, since), conditional (if, provided that), concessive (although, even if), comparative (as), temporal (when, before, after), final (so that, in order to).

Verbal Periphrases

• Aspectual: inchoative (to begin to + inf), iterative (to again + gerund), durative (to keep on + gerund), resultative (to have + participle), and approximative (to be about to + inf).
• Modal: obligation (must, to have to + inf), probability (may, might + inf), and possibility.

Syntactic Analysis

Compound Sentences

Coordination: copulative, disjunctive, adversative, distributive, and explicative. Independent clauses.

Subordination:

• Noun clauses: introduced by that, subject or direct object. Direct speech reproduces the exact words; indirect speech reports them with grammatical transformations.
• Adverbial clauses: of place, time, manner, comparison, cause, consequence, concession, condition, and purpose.
• Adjective clauses: introduced by relative pronouns.

The Pronoun se

• Reflexive: direct (the subject acts on itself), indirect (the subject acts on itself for someone), causative, and expressive.
• Reciprocal: two or more subjects act on each other.
• Passive with se: se dijo (it was said).
• Pronominal verbs: verbs that require the pronoun (arrepentirse, to regret).
• Impersonal se: se vive bien (one lives well).

Lexicology

Structure of words:

• Simple: a lexeme with flexive morphemes (human-os).
• Compound: two or more lexemes (hobby).
• Derived: created by adding prefixes (sub-marine) or suffixes (zapat-ería).
• Parasynthetic: prefix and suffix together (un-rock-ar).

Semantic relations:

• Homonymy: words that are written or pronounced the same but have different meanings (don, gift/title; vaso, glass/vessel).
• Polysemy: one word with several related meanings.
• Antonymy: opposites (white and black).
• Synonymy: similarity of meaning between words (ruin, disaster).