Spanish Literature: From the Generation of '27 to Postwar

Avant-Garde Poetry

The avant-garde movements that influenced the Generation of '27 were, in essence, Creationism, Ultraism, and Surrealism.

Luis Cernuda

Born in Seville, his work Reality and Desire contains surrealistic poems alongside intimate and personal expressions. His collection Forbidden Pleasures utilizes free verse to explore the boundaries of love, desire, and pleasure, ultimately suggesting that love is an impossibility and only loneliness remains.

Vicente Aleixandre

Born in Seville, he received the National Prize for Literature for Destruction or Love and was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work is characterized by:

• Social rejection: Singing about love and nature in Destruction or Love.
• Solidarity: Expressed in The Story of the Heart.

In Destruction or Love, he equates love with death; however, there is no rejection of love, but rather an exaltation of it, where minerals and wild animals represent the purest forms of life.

Other Productions of the Generation of '27

Beyond poetry, authors cultivated prose, literary essays, and poetic prose. Drama highlights include the works of Rafael Alberti and Federico García Lorca, a decisive figure in the dramatic renewal of the early 20th century.

Federico García Lorca

Lorca created a new concept of theater that combined dramatic performance with poetry. He began in modernist theater and wrote farces and surrealist-influenced works. His most representative pieces are his dramas.

Features of Lorca's Dramas

The central themes of these works are frustration, love, and death. These plays are characterized by intense lyricism, expressed through songs and symbolic characters, blending both verse and prose. His major works include the Tragic Cycle:

• Blood Wedding
• Yerma
• The House of Bernarda Alba

Literature Since the Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War, propaganda literature predominated on both Republican and Nationalist sides, often at the expense of literary quality. Since the war, the evolution of Spanish literature has been linked to the country's social and political changes.

Main Stages

• Postwar Literature: Characterized by the exaltation of dominant ideas and works reflecting anxiety about the national situation.
• Social Literature: Ideological openness facilitated the publication of testimonies and reports addressing the social problems of the era.
• Formal Renewal: Foreign literary influences led to significant formal experimentation.
• Latest Trends: Authors began to express themselves freely, leading to a continuous renewal of diverse literary orientations.