Spanish Language and Literature: A Historical Journey

Predicative Sentences

Transitive

The action the subject performs falls on the direct object.

Intransitive

The action is not performed by the subject, and there is no direct object.

Reflexive

The action is performed on oneself.

Reciprocal

The action is performed one to another.

Origins of Our Language

The language has a lexical basis and is a Romance language.

Pre-Roman Substrate

The influence of languages present before the arrival of the Romans (Celts, Iberians, etc.).

Germanic and Arabic Superstrate

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, invasions by Germanic and Arab peoples occurred.

Adstrate

The influence of neighboring languages.

Patrimonial Words

Words that have evolved within our language.

Indo-European Family

• Romance Languages (Catalan, Spanish)
• Germanic Languages (German, English)
• Celtic Languages (Breton, Scottish)
• Slavic Languages (Russian, Slovak)
• Indo-Iranian Languages (Hindi, Bengali)
• Hellenic Languages (Armenian, Greek)

State of the Spanish Language

Spanish

Derived from Vulgar Latin, its sounds can be located in north-central Spain.

Galician

Spoken in Galicia, it evolved from Portuguese and comes from Latin.

Catalan

Derived from Vulgar Latin spoken in the ninth century in Andalusia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands.

Euskara (Basque)

Not derived from Latin.

19th-Century Literature

Romanticism

Artistic and literary cultural movement in Europe at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. Belief in the goodness of people, subjectivity, fantasy, and defense of individuality.

Realism

Literary current, from 1830, aimed at reflecting reality objectively.

Naturalism

Evolution of realism, placing characters in more degraded environments, all with applicable biological and social differences.

Late 19th-Century Literature

New trends emerged at the end of the 19th century:

• Pre-Raphaelism: Ideological movement rejecting the Industrial Revolution.
• Parnassianism: French movement rejecting romance.
• Symbolism: Belief that poetry could not represent reality.
• Decadentism: French movement believing society was in decline.
• Impressionism: Related to naturalism, originally stemming from painting.

20th-Century Literature

Renovating critics called avant-gardes began to emerge.

• Futurism: Took machines as a source of inspiration.
• Cubism: Related to painting, creating an altered and heterogeneous reality.
• Dadaism: Created by sculptor Tristan Tzara, proposing a breakdown of syntax and incoherent poetry.
• Surrealism: Evolution of Dadaism, based on the study of dreams.

Literary Authors

• France (Victor Hugo, Jules Verne)
• Spanish (Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Antonio Machado)
• Portuguese (Ramón Cabanillas, Rosalía de Castro)
• English (Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë)
• German (Franz Kafka)
• Italian (Luigi Pirandello)
• Russian (Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy)
• Norwegian (Henrik Ibsen)

19th/20th Centuries in Our Region

Our culture experienced a period inspired by romantic ideas of recovery. Appearing in 1833, the Renaixença aimed to recover patriotic and national sentiment (Àngel Guimerà, Jacint Verdaguer).

Our culture was also influenced by realism and naturalism. Modernism, which sought to renew and modernize society, reached the end of the 19th century. Modernist artists believed art was the only source of renewal.

The 20th century saw the birth of the avant-garde. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) disrupted this, and once democracy arrived, our literature began to reappear.