Spanish Realist literature
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| • Medieval literature |
| • Renaissance |
| • Miguel de Cervantes |
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| • Realism |
| • Modernismo |
| • Generation of '98 |
| • Novecentismo |
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Spanish Realist literature is the literature written in Spain during the second half of the 19th century, following the Realist movement which predominated in Europe.
When the Romantic movement waned, a new literary movement arose in Europe in the middle of the 19th century: Realism. It was a style that originated in France around 1850 which developed from some aspects of Romanticism, mainly costumbrismo. Romanticism slowly declined and artists began to rebel against "art for art's sake"; The literary imagination of the moment grew tired of fanciful and colorful depictions, and now focused objectively on people, actions, and society. The main precursor was Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), who, with works like The Human Comedy, imposed a moral and social objective on the novel. This purpose, which became the almost exclusive concern of the writers of the time, soon led to Naturalism.
The term realist was used for the first time in 1850, referring to painting, but it was adopted later by literature. In literature it was applied mainly to the novel. One of the reasons for the popular success of novels is their publication in newspapers of the time. The publishers issued the novel in installments to encourage the public to buy the newspaper daily. The attitude of the realistic writer is analytical and critical, and usually remains objective. The important novels of the 19th century were of social character, and the writers considered themselves to be "historians of the present".
[edit] Historical context
During the 19th century, Spain experienced one of the most tumultuous periods of its history. The century opened with the War of Independence against France and ended with the Spanish-American War and the "Disaster of '98"—the loss of Cuba and Puerto Rico in America and the Philippines in Asia. The Borbón (Bourbon) dynasty, after the reigns of Fernando VII (1814-1833) and Isabel II (1833-1868), was overthrown in the revolution of 1868, the Glorious Revolution. The rule of Serrano (1869-1870) and the brief reign of Amadeo de Saboya occurred (1871-1873). Later, the short era of the First Republic began (1873-1874), which was followed by the Restoration of the Borbón dynasty under Alfonso XII (1874-1885), son of Isabel II, after the uprising of Martínez Campos. After the death of Alfonso XII, his second wife, María Cristina assumed the regency until 1902, the year in which Alfonso's son Alfonso XIII began to reign.
[edit] Naturalism
This literary movement began in France and its initiator was Émile Zola (1840-1902). This style descends from the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the methods of the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), and many distinctive achievements of the modern spirit: democracy, experimental methods (Claude Bernard) and theories of heredity(Charles Darwin). Zola, a socialist, looks for the cause of social problems in society, and of the individual's problems rooted in biological heredity. Thus,Naturalism adopts a materialist and determinist concept of people, who are not morally responsible for their actions and situations, because they are the result of environment and heredity. While the realist writer is conscious of what happens, the naturalist investigates cause and effect. Alcoholics, the insane, and psychopaths were common in his works, predicated on Zola's belief that environment was to blame for many of society's ills.
Zola introduced the naturalistic theory in The Experimental Novel (1880). In this essay on literary criticism, he maintains that the novelist is an observer and an experimenter. From the point of view of the observer, the writer offers the facts as he has seen them, and establishes the environment which the characters inhabit and where the facts are developed. From the point of view of the experimenter, the novelist "institutes the experience", that is to say, he moves the characters through a particular story to show that the succession of facts will be the one that is demanded by the determinism of the studied phenomena.
In Spain, the contradictions between naturalistic theories and religious beliefs reduced Naturalism's manifestation. Some critics even wondered whether Naturalism in the strictest sense ever occurred in Spain. Emilia Pardo Bazán, who was considered inside the movement, deals with this in her article La cuestión palpitante (The Burning Question) in 1883. Additionally, passages of authors such as Benito Pérez Galdós have been considered naturalistic, but that has been explicitly rejected by the majority of literary critics. When speaking of Spanish Naturalism, the border with the Realism is not clear and, because theories were not adopted, it is not easy to differentiate both movements well.
[edit] Characteristics of Realism
In Spain, the best literary fruit of the second half of the 19th century was the novel, consequence of the international blossoming of the genre at this time, as expression of the uprising of the middle-class, that throughout successive revolutions (1789, 1820, 1830, 1848) was conquering the political power. The values and inquietudes of the middle-class appear reflected in the literature of the Realism like in a mirror: individualism, materialism, desire of social ascent, and esteem of daily and immutable things.
The themes of the literary Realism are fundamentally the contrast between the traditional and farming values and the modern and urban values, the exodus from the field to the city and the social and moral contrasts that it causes, the fight for the social ascent and the moral and economic success, the insatisfied condition of the woman who already has right to the basic education but cannot access the world of job, and the middle-class independence and individualism; with all which the theme of adultery and the folletinesque and sentimental fantasy appears, as a way to escape. There are two tendencies in the Realism: the progressist and the conservative.
The realistic novel of this period is characterized by:
- Objective vision of the reality through direct observation of customs or psychological characters. Any subjective aspect, fantastic events and every feeling that moves away from the reality, is eliminated: "The novel is the image of the life" (Galdós), "an artistic copy of the reality" (Clarín).
- Defense of a thesis: the narrators write their works focusing the reality from their moral conception. That is called the omniscient narrator. The defense of a thesis usually compromises the objectivity of the novel.
- Themes near the reader: marital conflicts, infidelity, defense of the ideals, etc.
- The colloquial and popular language acquires great importance since it locates the personages in their real environment.
[edit] Realism and Naturalism in Spain
In Spain, Realism installed itself with extreme facility, since a precedent in picaresque novels and Don Quixote existed. It reached its maximum splendor in the second half of the 19th century (Juan Valera, Pereda and Galdós), although not reaching the rigor of the canons established by the school of Balzac.
- In Galdós, and later in Clarín, Pardo Bazán and Blasco Ibáñez, clear naturalistic influences exist, but without the scientific and experimental foundations that Émile Zola wanted to imprint in its works. They solely share the spirit of fight against the conservative ideology and, in many occasions, its subversive behavior.
- The realistic novel generally reflects regional ambients, like that of Pereda in Cantabria, Juan Valera in Andalusia, Clarín in Asturias, etc. Benito Perez Galdós is an exception, because he prefers to acclimate himself in the Madrilenian urban space.
The Naturalism in Spain, like in France, had also its detractors and great controversies were created. Between the opponents, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón and José María de Pereda are found, who got to describe it as immoral. Its most exalted defenders were Benito Perez Galdós and Emilia Pardo Bazán. The hardest controversy took place as of 1883, as a result of the publication of La cuestión palpitante (the trembling question) of Pardo Bazán.
[edit] The novel: main authors
[edit] Juan Valera
Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano (Cabra, Córdoba, October 1824 - Madrid, April 1905) belonged to an aristocratic family. He carried out diplomatic missions in several countries and held important political positions. His career as a novelist began when he was around fifty years old. In his last years he was victim of a progressive blindness.
From his beginnings, Valera was opposed to the Romanticism, because of its extremisms, as much as to the Realism, because it prevented him to totally develop his fantasy. He only adopted a realist position when he chose real atmospheres (like his native Andalusia) and lifelike personages, although he rejected the less attractive aspects of the reality, not to the taste of the naturalists and some realists.
His importance is due to his novels; the first of them is Pepita Jiménez (1874), mostly written in epistolar form. In this work, the history of a widow is narrated, who puts herself in agreement with the father of a seminarist to move him away of his false vocation. Other important works are Doña Luz (approaching questions of religious vocation) and Juanita la Larga. This third novel counts the idyll of Don Paco, a fiftyish man, with the protagonist, who wishes to redeem herself of it by a honest marriage.
Juan Valera was a liberal politician and skeptical in religion. He used a simple, although nonvulgar, literary language. When he died, the writers of the Generation of the 98 kept a deep respect to him. Today he is considered by great part of the critic as the best prosist of the 19th century, in spite of recognizing the creative superiority of Galdós.
[edit] José María de Pereda
José María de Pereda was born in Polanco (province of Santander, present Cantabria) in 1833. He pertained to a Hidalgo family, he traveled much abroad, and he was a carlist deputy, although later he dedicated himself to the cultivation of his lands and to the literature. He counted on the friendship of Galdós, despite their opposite political ideology. He died in 1906 in his native town.
He began his literary production as a Costumbrist: inclined to the realism with observation capacities, he published Mountainous scenes. Later, he would find his ideal formula for the novel, inserting that Costumbrism in a vision in love with the landscape and the people of the mountain, with their passions and their characteristic language. In his first novels of this type (idyllic novel), he used to face the peace and the ignorance of those rustic people with the political ambushes of the modern life (Don Gonzalo de la Gonzalera and De tal palo tal astilla). He defended a thesis that nowadays few would accept (like father, like son). The idyllic novel finishes when Pereda decided to resign to the explicit defense of any thesis. Stories like Sotileza (epic of Cantabrian fishermen) and La puchera belong to this second period. The one that is considered his masterpiece is Peñas arriba (1895), whose descriptive bucolism and the Casticism of its style can seem antiquated nowadays. In spite of that, José María de Pereda is considered a great narrator, equipped with great descriptive and epic capacity.
[edit] Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón was born in Guadix (Granada) in 1833. He was one of the principal responsibles for the domination of the realism over the romantic prosa in rows at those moments. He was a politician in addition to a writer and his ideology evolved from liberal positions to more traditionalistic ones.
He participated in the war of Morocco as a voluntary and he left written testimony of his experience on Diary of a witness of the African war (1859). During a time he was a writer of trips, relating several of his trips in his articles. In a time his religious novels stood out, being the most popular of all The scandal (1875); in this novel he defended the Jesuits, which was very controversial. His most popular work, nevertheless, and by which he is remembered, is The hat of three tips, published in 1874, that would inspire Falla his famous ballet.
[edit] Benito Perez Galdós
Galdós is considered to be the most representative writer of the movement. He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1843. He studied law in Madrid. He later lived in Paris, where he was intrigued by the novels of Honoré de Balzac, a strong influence on his later work. He declared himself to be progressive and anticlerical, but this did not prevent him from forging close friendships with Menéndez y Pelayo and José María de Pereda, of opposite ideologies. Although he defined himself as a republican, little by little his radicalism tempered, and he maintained a personal friendship with Alfonso XIII. In 1910 he began to lose his eyesight, and the expenses of his numerous paramours brought him to near-ruin. The Spanish government sought the Nobel Prize for him, but was opposed by a significant portion of the Spanish populace, including the Real Academia and the leadership of the Catholic Church. He died, blind, in 1920.
[edit] The National Episodes
Among the prolific works of Galdós are the Episodios Nacionales (National Episodes), a sprawling opus of 46 volumes in five distinct series. They depict a broad representation of contemporary Spanish history between the War of Independence and the Restoration, which serve as a backdrop for his stories.
The first series, written between 1873 and 1875, includes the episodes of Trafalgar, Bailén, Zaragoza and Gerona. In almost all of them, the protagonist is Gabriel Araceli, a young man who lives during the climax of the War of Independence. Later series include volumes such as Equipaje del Rey José (The Luggage of King José); Los cien mille hijos de San Luis (The One Hundred Thousand Children of San Luis); Zumalacárregui, about the First Carlist War; and Prim (The One of the Sad Destinies), a book about Isabel II. The last series depicted events experienced by Galdós himself, but the work was unfinished and it is seldom a topic of study or discussion.
[edit] Novels
In his first epoch (1867-1878), Galdós vigorously wrote against intolerance and hypocrisy. His novels feature young male protagonists who confront the hostile atmosphere of provincial cities. Ironically, his writing at this time demonstrates the same narrow-mindedness that he condemns, from the opposite ideological perspective. (Doña Perfecta, Gloria, La Familia de León Roch). Marianela, one of his more prominent novels of the first epoch, is the story of a tragic relationship between a blind man and an ignorant, ugly girl. The girl flees when her loved one recovers his sight, afraid to show her face to him; she dies, heartbroken, when he marries another woman.
Later, between 1881 and 1915, he published 24 novels, which represent a "human comedy" of the daily life of Madrid. They maintained progressive, but less provocative, themes. These books focus on the Spanish middle class, portrayed with precision and a certain melancholy. Significant works of this group include La de Bringas (The Bringas Woman), about social climbing; Fortunata y Jacinta, his most important work; Miau, a dramatic vision of the bureaucracy of the time; Torquemada en la Hoguera (Torquemada in the Inferno), a study of greed and avarice; Misericordia (Compassion), with people of less-refined upbringing.
[edit] Plays
Late in life, Pérez Galdós began a career as a dramatic playwright. His most notable plays include La Loca de la Casa (The Crazy Woman of the House), Hija de San Quintin (The Daughter of San Quintín), Electra (whose opening sparked a riot) and El Abuelo (The Grandfather), which was adapted into a 1998 film by José Luis Garci. Galdós's theater works are characterized by sincerity and non-conformism; although contemporary at the time they were written, some of his theater works sound dated by current standards.
[edit] Importance of Galdós
The impact of the National Episodes and many of his novels and plays was significant. Critics and writers of his time considered him to be a genius, although his outspoken views on religion, social policies and politics stimulated strong opposition from political and religious authority figures. The Generation of '98 were strongly influenced by his writing, although they rebelled against his "chabacanería" or perceived vulgarity; Ramón del Valle-Inclán, for example, nicknamed him "Don Benito el garbancero" or the chick-pea man. However, they failed to realize that the only vulgarity was found in the lives that he described.
[edit] Emilia Pardo Bazán
Emilia Pardo Bazán was born in La Coruña in 1851. Unique daughter of the counts of Pardo Bazán, she got married being seventeen years old and she settled in Madrid. She was a woman with an ample culture, she made numerous trips, and a Chair of Literature in the University of Madrid was created for her, city where she died in 1921.
[edit] Work
Between her studies on the literature of the present time, The trembling question stands out, and although in it she does not accept the naturalistic materialism, she defends a realistic attitude and she faces with those who maintain that evil can only appear in literature to be defeated.
Her style was energetic and she deepened in difficult problems and situations. She wrote hundreds of stories that she published reunited, as the Stories of Marianela. But her literary production enjoys greater importance in novels such as A trip of fiancès, which narrates the story of a marriage between a mature man and a young incult, wealthy woman; or The tribune, the most naturalist of her novels, where she describes the hard proletarian life in a tobacco factory. Also these are of extreme importance: Los pazos de Ulloa and The mother Nature, with Galician personages and landscapes, with an enthusiastic argument and sometimes violent.
[edit] Luis Coloma
Luis Coloma (Jerez de la Frontera, January 1851 - Madrid, 1914), son of a famous doctor, being twelve years old he entered the preparatory Naval school of San Fernando (1863), but later he left and he received the master's degree in Law by the University of Seville, although he never got to exert the lawyer profession. He became a member of the Real Academia in 1908 and he died in 1914.
He cultivated literature with great success among the readers. He wrote two important novels: Smallness and Boy. In the first he makes a critic of the high Madrilenian society in the years previous to the monarchic Restoration (1814) in the figure of Alfonso XII, son of the overthrown Isabel II. Later he published solely narrations of historical character, like Jeromín, on Don Juan de Austria.
[edit] Leopoldo Alas (Clarín)
Leopoldo Alas was born in Zamora in 1852, although he always felt deeply Asturian. He completed his study of law in Oviedo. He then obtained his doctorate in Madrid, where he lost faith in God. From then on he would live in permanent spiritual conflict, which is evident in his work. At the age of twenty-three, he began to use the pseudonym Clarín in his work. As a professor at the University of Oviedo in 1883, he defended republican ideas, but soon tired of politics. In 1892, a crisis of conscience renewed his faith in God, although he would not adhere to the extremes of Catholic orthodoxy. He died in Oviedo in 1901.
[edit] Work
Clarín had great prestige as a literary critic. His articles demonstrate his great knowledge and righteous judgment (expressed on many occasions through scathing sarcasm). His articles, which made him a feared authority in the Spanish literary panorama, were compiled in volumes such as Solos de Clarín and Paliques.
He also wrote short stories and novellas; he published more than seventy short works. Among the first short stories that he composed, Pipá (1879), which tells of the misfortunes of a picaresque figure from Oviedo, stands out. Also notable is Adiós, Cordera, a classic dramatic idyll.
But his reputation as a novelist is exemplified by the only two novels he wrote, La Regenta and Su único hijo; the former is more significant. With clear influences from Madame Bovary by Flaubert, it physically and morally depicts Vetusta (which was modeled on his hometown of Oviedo) as a prototypical Spanish city steeped in tradition. Alas employed naturalistic techniques, but he did not paint squalid environs as didZola; instead, what predominates is a sense of pessimism, tempered by touches of tenderness and irony. In La Regenta individuals find themselves in conflict with their own consciences (particularly its protagonist Ana Ozores, whose character is similar to Emma Bovary, except that she comes across as more sympathetic and less conniving). Characters find themselves conflicted by duty and desire. Clarín's portrayal of the city was considered insulting by mzny. The novel was quickly condemned by the Church, although with the passage of time, Clarín and the bishop of Oviedo established a firm friendship. Today La Regenta is considered to be an exemplar of Spanish Realism, in the same class as Fortunata y Jacinta by Galdós.
[edit] Armando Palacio Valdés
Armando Palacio Valdés (Entralgo, Asturias, 1853 - Madrid, 1938) was educated in Avilés and finished his baccalaureate in Oviedo; he pursued a career as an attorney in Madrid. He was editor of Revista Europea, where he published articles which he soon after compiled in Semblanzas literarias (1871). In 1885 he published the novel José, a realistic picture of the customs and manners of seafaring folk. After the death of José María de Pereda in 1905, Palacio Valdés assumed Pereda's position in the Real Academia Española.
Palacio Valdés was a good friend of Clarín. He wrote several important novels, among them Marta y María, in which the two Biblical sisters are transported to a contemporary setting and fight against the false mysticism of the time. The most popular of his works is La monja de San Sulpicio (The Nun from San Sulpicio), in which he narrates the adventures that precede the marriage of a Galician doctor with the protagonist, a nun without vocation who does not renew her vows. Also notable is El pueblo perdido (The Lost Village), a dramatic history of a town ruined by mining.
[edit] Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia in 1867. He maintained radical republican ideas by which he underwent arrests and exile. He was a deputy during seven legislatures. In 1909 he left to Argentina in search for fortune, but his attempt failed. He defended the allies during World War I (1914-1918); with that background he wrote The four riders of the Apocalypse, a novel of great world-wide success. He followed a life of a cosmopolitan millionaire and many of his stories were adapted to the cinema in Hollywood. He died in 1928 in Menton, Côte d'Azur. His rests were transferred to Valencia in 1933, where they were received triumphantly.
Blasco produced an enormous work of novels; works acclimated in Valencia or its province, so intensely loved by the writer, stand out (Arroz y tartana, La barraca, Entre naranjos, Cañas y barro). He reflected his political, social and antireligious ideas in The cathedral or The warehouse, although as previously commented, his fame is due to The four riders of the Apocalypse to a great extent, that treats on familiar dramas during the Great War.
Nevertheless, the Blasco Ibáñez better treated by the critic is the one of Valencian inspiration. Sometimes he has been considered the Spanish Zola because he shares with the French novelist a subversive attitude, predilection for squalid atmospheres, preoccupation for the biological inheritance, etc. He writes intensely and his style can be described as coarse, although it does not lack images of plastic purity. Because of his age, he could have belonged to the Generation of the 98, but his worldly spirit differs from the ascetism and the culture of those writers.
[edit] The poetry
It is certain that towards the second half of the 19th century the novel evolved quickly towards Realism, but this did not happen to the lyric and to the theater, whose transformation was less violent and still continued to be impregnated of Romanticism until the end of the century.
This late Romanticism is more apparent than real; sometimes it lacks basis and the lyric exaltation over which the true romantic abandoned himself. This is due to the society, because that was the moment in which the bourgeoisie would consolidate the Restoration of 1875. This society, that was laying the foundations of Capitalism and was taking the first steps of industrialization in the country, did not leave capacity for the people who admired the art in an unselfish form.
The most representative writers are Gaspar Núñez de Arce and Ramón de Campoamor, sometimes assigned to the Romanticism as opponents to the movement, because this delayed Romanticism still had small vestiges left with Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro.
[edit] Ramón de Campoamor
Ramón de Campoamor was born in Navia (Asturias) in 1817, and died in 1901. He belonged to the Moderate Party, in addition to being employee of Treasury, governor and deputy. He wrote treaties on philosophical subjects (The absolute), dramatic plays, and poems of epic and philosophical pretensions (Columbus, The universal drama and El licenciado Torralba).
Nevertheless, his most personal creations are his small poems, like Humoradas, Doloras and Small poems. With them he tried to break up with Romanticism, creating a poetry in accordance with the moment, prosaic, simple, skeptical and in some cases ironic, with a moral that is usually trivial. Today it can be considered to be simple by the scholars. In any case, Campoamor explained his innovating ideas in Poetic, where he says:
- The poetry is the rythmical representation of a thought by means of an image, and expressed in a language that can be said in prosa neither with more naturalness nor with less words... Only the rhythm should separate the language of the verse from the typical one of the prose... Being unpleasant to me the art by the art and the special dialect of the Clasicism, it has been my constant persistence to arrive at the art by the idea and to express this one in the common language, revolutionizing the basis and the aspect of the poetry.
[edit] Gaspar Núñez de Arce
Gaspar Núñez de Arce (1834-1903) was born in Valladolid. He was Governor of Barcelona, Deputy and overseas Minister.
He wrote dramas, such as The bundle of firewood, that deals with the theme of the prince Don Carlos, son of Felipe II, a subject already treated by Schiller; although his better valued work is constituted by his poetry and his extensive poems.
Núñez de Arce took care of the expression, but his poems are loaded with political artificialness (as in Shouts of the combat, where he tried to obtain a civil and patriotic poetry) in exalted speeches of philosophical cut (The doubt). It is usually attributed to him the abuse of a too easy rhetoric. He also wrote stories or legends in verse, like An idyll, The fishing and The vertigo.
[edit] Other poets
Although less important, there were also other numerous poets who followed the realistic tendencies, among them:
- Ventura Ruiz Aguilera (1820-1881): Born in Salamanca and author of National echoes, patriotic legends, and Elegías.
- Vicente Wenceslao Querol (1836-1889): Natural of Valencia, author of Rimas.
- Federico Balart (1831-1905): wrote Dolores , a collection of elegías written to the death of his wife.
- Emilio Ferrari (1850-1907): from Valladolid, he imitated Núñez de Arce.
- José Velarde (1849-1892): as Emilio Ferrari, he followed the steps of Núñez de Arce.
- Manuel Reina (1856-1905): He shaped in his poems the color of Andalusia, his homeland.
- Joaquín Bartrina (1850-1880): Born in Barcelona, he took the humor and the ordinariness of Ramón de Campoamor to the extreme, to which he added a materialistic pesimism, in his work Something.
[edit] The theater
The Spanish Realist theater describes an arc from the most conservative and acritical positions to the most progressive and acid ones: from the high comedy of Adelardo López de Ayala and Ventura de la Vega, to the ethically anxious theater of Benito Pérez Galdós and the sharp critic of Enrique Gaspar (1842-1902), a dramatist of minorities. Next to these authors, the interest in the Costumbrism that reflected the most conservative bourgeois public was started again, through genres like the zarzuela or género chico, the sainete or the theater per hours. It was fundamentally an evasion theater, which tried not to create problems of conscience to the bourgeois. Next to that, it tried to revitalize the old fashioned conservative value of the honor with initiatives to revive the romantic historical drama by Manuel Tamayo y Baus or by the Neo-Romanticism of the mathematician José Echegaray.
[edit] José Echegaray
José Echegaray (1832-1916) was born in Madrid and occupied high political positions. He was a civil engineer, of whose school he was director. He alternated the study of the mathematics and the scientific problems (on which he published two books: Popular science and Scientific vulgarization) with the dramatic poetry, which, according to Lázaro Carreter, "gives him a certain systematic roughness that shows the effort more that the poetic instinct". In 1904 the Nobel Prize was granted to him, next to Frédéric Mistral.
Echegaray tried to combine two incompatible elements: an exaggerated romanticism with the latent positivism and realism of his time. As a result a contemporary customary theater occurs, by means of romantic procedures, in which --according to the critic-- he abuses the tragic and pathetic situations, and which is characterized so that in each of his works a case of conscience, an ideological problem or, as one of its works is titled, a Conflict between the duties arises. Among his most outstanding works there are The crazy God, Stain that cleans, The great Galeoto, Or madness or sanctity.
[edit] Manuel Tamayo y Baus
Manuel Tamayo y Baus (1829-1898) was born in Madrid. He was the son of actors and he married the daughter of the famous actor Isidoro Máiquez. He was in permanent contact with the theater and he covered great variety of subjects in his works. He wrote classic tragedies (Virginia), romantic dramas (Madness of love, on Juana la Loca), Costumbrist theater (The snow ball and The positive) and thesis theater (Incidents of honor and The good men). His most important work is A new drama, in which he showcases the theater company of Shakespeare, which is going to represent a drama that unintentionally mirrors the reality of the actors' lives. Yorick discovers through jealous fellow actor Walton that Alicia, who plays the role of unfaithful wife in the work, is unfaithful to him in reality as well. In his quest for revenge, Walton is determined to let Yorick know that Alicia loves Edmundo and, when he opportunely gets the evidence he needs, he substitutes Edmundo's letter to Alicia for the prop letter and presents it to Yorick during the performance. At this point Yorick is enmeshed in both the play he is presenting and the drama of his own discovery and kills Edmundo on stage before the audience. Finally Shakespeare explains to the audience what has happened: the play cannot go on because Yorick got so involved in his stage role that he killed his rival. Shakespeare also reveals, without implicating himself, that Walton is dead as well, having been found stabbed outside on the street.
[edit] Other dramatists
In addition to the mentioned ones, also the following stand out:
- Adelardo López de Ayala (1828-1865): He occupied high political positions (Minister and President of the Congress). He developed the high comedy with works like The percentage, The tile roof of glass, Consolation and The new Don Juan, in which he raised moralizing theses.
- Eugenio Sellés (1844-1926): he wrote The Gordian knot, in which he displayed the problems that the marriage carries.
- Enrique Gaspar (1842-1902): Author of comedies like The frock coat, Decent people and The circumstances, which reflect the bourgeois atmosphere of his time.
- José Feliú y Codina (1847-1897): he wrote the rural drama La Dolores and regional customary theater.
- Leopoldo Cano (1844-1934): His most outstanding works are La Pasionaria and The butterfly.
Among the librettists of zarzuelas, Marcos Zapata, Ricardo de la Vega, José López Silva and Miguel Ramos Carrión stand out; and among the authors of sainetes, Tomás Luceño and Vital Aza stand out.
[edit] The critic: Menéndez Pelayo
Menéndez Pelayo was perhaps the summit figure of the Spanish culture in the 19th century, teacher of the thinking, the history, and the contemporary critic. He was born in Santander in 1856 and he studied in several countries. When he was twenty-two years old he obtained a chair in the University of Madrid. When he was twenty-five he was appointed member of the Real Academia Española, and a little later, member of the Real Academia of History. He also directed the Biblioteca Nacional. When he died in 1912 he left as legacy to Santander his valuable personal library.
The work of Menéndez Pelayo is very extensive and counts on a great capacity of synthesis. In his books his love for Spain and a passionate catholicism can be appreciated. He tried to reconstruct all the historical past of Spain, with a revaluation purpose that in several occasions dragged him to strong controversies (for example, the one originated by his book The Spanish science). For many critics he drew the fundamental lines of the Spanish thought in works like History of the heterodox Spaniards and the History of the aesthetic ideas in Spain. With respect to literary history, he constructed works like Origins of the novel, Anthology of lyric poets (which finishes at the end of the Middle Ages), the prologues to Works of Lope de Vega, among others.
[edit] References
- Crow, John A. Spain: The root and the Flower. Berkley: University of California Press, 2005.
- López Jiménez, Luis. El Naturalismo y España: Valera frente a Zola. Madrid: Pearson Alhambra, 1977. ISBN 84-205-0355-X
- Miralles García, Enrique. La novela española de la Restauración (1875-1885): sus formas y enunciados narrativos. Barcelona: Puvill, 1979. ISBN 84-85202-12-0
- Miranda García, Soledad. Religión y clero en la gran novela española del siglo XIX. Madrid: Pegaso, 1982. ISBN 84-85244-09-5
- Oleza, Joan. La novela del siglo XIX: del parto a la crisis de una ideología. Valencia: Bello, 1976. ISBN 84-212-0039-9
- Pattison, Walter T. El naturalismo español: historia externa de un movimiento literario. Madrid: Gredos, 1969. ISBN 84-249-0279-3
- Villanueva Prieto, Francisco Darío. Teorías del realismo literario. Pozuelo de Alarcón: Espasa-Calpe, 1992. ISBN 84-239-1771-1
- Many Authors. Polémica sobre el realismo. Buenos Aires: Tiempo Contemporáneo, 1972.
[edit] See also
- Realism (arts): general overview of the movement
- Literary realism: realism in international literature
- Spanish literature: evolution of Spanish literature
