Spanish Literature in the 1940s: Novels, Theater, and Poetry

Spanish Literature in the 1940s

Alarmist Novel

• Representative Novel: The Family of Pascual Duarte
• Narrator: Autobiographical account, 1st person
• Argument: Extreme situations
• Characters: Antiheroes
• Space: Sordid environments
• Ideological Aspects: It is determined by the education received
• Style: Misrepresenting the truth

Existential Novel

• Representative Novel: Nothing, a story of the 1st person, frustrating experiences of Andrea
• Topics: Existential anguish and extreme situations
• Characters: Protagonist individual
• Time: Brief, reduced
• Area: Closed, asphyxiating places

Novels of the 1950s

Precursor Novel

• The Beehive
• Witnessing society
• The cruelty to the weak and lack of ethical values
• Developed language
• Character: Collective
• Narrator: Omniscient observer and subjective
• Time: Nonlinear
• Space: Urban

Compromised Novel: Neorealism

• The Jarama
• A critical approach is inspired by democratic and universal ethical values
• There is a balance
• Character: Collective
• Narrator: Observer
• Time: Linear and reduced
• Space: Urban and rural workers and environments
• Dialogues matter
• Thorough descriptions

Evasion Theater of the 1940s

The theater of the war was being renewed because:

1. Censorship existed. Apart from being a literary genre, it is a show that is represented.
2. The dependence on the bourgeois public's taste. They preferred to escape a critical theater.
3. Line break with theatrical renewal.

In the 1940s, the theater scene was dominated by the regime's propaganda and the bourgeois theater (theater of evasion).

Poetry of the 1940s

Rooted Poetry

• Poetry of escape and excitement of the regime
• It is based on the personal experience of the poet, who sought refuge in their daily life and yearned for serenity and harmony
• The motherland, idealized love, family, landscapes, religious feeling
• Rhetorical, classical style, simple language, free verse, surreal images
• Ridruejo

Uprooted Poetry

• Anguish, dissent, torn testimony
• Existential anguish, the subject of God
• Direct language, alarmist tone, vocabulary related to pain and death, free verse and sonnets
• Dámaso Alonso