Generation of '98: Spanish Identity

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Generation of '98

• At the end of the 19th century, Spain was undergoing an economic, moral, and social crisis.
• The year 1898 was very hard; Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
• Writers of this time were concerned about these issues, making them the central theme of their work.
• The term "writers of '98" began to be used to describe these authors, though not all were in complete agreement with each other.
• The initial group that wrote during this time, joined by youthful affinities, included Pio Baroja, Azorin, and Ramiro de Maeztu, with Miguel de Unamuno as the leader and teacher. Antonio Machado and Ramon del Valle Inclan were incorporated later thanks to technical affinities.

Unamuno

• Unamuno's work addresses the identity of Spain and attempts to regenerate the country by seeking signs of identity in its landscape, classical literature, and history.
• For these writers, Castile represents the essence of Spain (the soul).
• The essence of the Spanish people is reflected in the characters of classical literature.
• "Intrahistoria" refers to the life of the common people.

Crisis at the End of the Century

• Existential conflicts focused on vital anguish, the meaning of life, the passage of time, destiny, and the will to resist facing life.
• Machado focused on the destiny of man, the passage of time, and death.
• Pio Baroja's characters were discontent with the world and lacked a sense of purpose in life.
• Unamuno explored existential and religious conflicts in a dramatic way.
• Main characters had a crisis of identity and were pessimistic and skeptical.

Religion and Its Problems

• There was a diversity of religious views, ranging from fervent Catholics like Azorin, Maeztu, Baroja, and Unamuno.
• These authors employed a sober, concise, and direct style with simple and expressive language.
• Rich vocabulary that included traditional, pure words that were falling out of use.
• Subjective vision, with the landscape, especially the barren Castilian plateau, serving as a symbol of decadence.
• Pio Baroja stood out as an excellent novelist of the Generation of '98.
• Pio Baroja's works have three aspects: the liveliness of the action, the plasticity of the description of landscapes and characters, and philosophical reflection.
• Azorin's works are characterized by subjective description in a simple and precise style with a cultured and rich vocabulary.
• Azorin made essays on the situation of Spain, like his most important book, "Castilla."
• Unamuno focused on his essays and novels.
• The essays displayed a concern for Spanish decadence, and his novels were very reflexive and philosophical.
• His novels had dialogue, reflexive character, autobiography, and narrative techniques like monologue.

Antonio Machado

• Writer of poetry and modernist poems who evolved to address the concerns of the Generation of '98.
• He wrote a theater with his brother Manuel, including didactic prose.

Valle Inclan

• Writer of theater who created the "esperpento," which is grotesque and extreme.
• His theater can be divided into two parts: an evasion stage (recreating Galicia in a supernatural world) and an "esperpento" stage (tragic and comic characters to criticize the situation in Spain).
• Juan Ramon Jimenez was the first professional poet with a sensitive stage, an intellectual stage (cultivating free verse), and a sufficient or true stage.

The Avant-Garde Movements

• These were the first artistic movements of the 20th century, initiated from WWI to WWII.
• It’s a cry of protest, questioning the arts and their institutions, seeking liberation and subjectivity.
• They attacked the social and cultural values of the bourgeois public.
• This group explored and staged the first confrontations.
• In the arts, it was used to refer to an advanced artistic movement that was a precursor of social changes.
• Consisted of renewal and exploration.

Principal Avant-Garde Movements

• Cubism: Originated in Paris with Pablo Picasso, features a fragmented style, collage, rediscovery of play and humor, and graphic layout.
• Dadaism: Originated in Germany with an absence of logic and linguistic semantics, favors contradiction and illogical situations.
• Futurism: Originated in Italy with pictorial art, colors and letters, punctuation marks used as mathematical and musical signs.
• Expressionism: Originated in Germany, in which the image of reality is deformed with expressive intentions.
• Surrealism: Originated after WWI, creating figurative universes in very personal styles based on automatism.
• Manifesto: A public declaration of doctrines or purposes of general interest.

Authors of the Main Vanguard Manifestos

• Andre Breton, Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Apollinaire.

Influences

• Derived from Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Pierre Reverdy, Vicente Huidobro, and Pablo Picasso.
• Influenced by the mass media (cinema and photos), society, politics, and World War I.
• Criticism of power through scandal.
• The avant-garde artists broke with previous art, seeking an autonomous, polemic, and critical art form.
• They eliminated the anecdote, narration, didacticism, confessional elements, and sentimentality.
• Production of fantastic, chaotic, fragmented, and absurd worlds, embracing experimentation and a playful attitude.

Modernism

• Poetic movement.
• The first movement born in America.
• Renewal of metrics and figurative language.
• Declared the triumph of art for art's sake.
• Located in the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th.
• Belle Époque
• Start of World War I in the early centuries.
• USA and England established a commercial and political conquest in Latin America.
• Latin American countries advanced to dependent democracies, which generated poverty.
• The modernists were influenced by Parnassianism and Symbolism
• Parnassianism: A literary school in France that favored formal perfection over negligence and sentimentality of Romanticism.
• Art for art's sake.

Symbolism

• A very important movement at the end of the 19th century in France
• Transmits a deep message with metaphor and simile
• Responsible for a deep formal renovation of the genre and the poet uses the symbol as a tool

Characteristics of Modernism

• New lyrical proposals, aristocratic sense of art, the poet is above everyday reality
• Cosmopolitanism
• Sensuality and eroticism
• Emphasis on poetic form over inspiration and message
• Elaborate language, use of foreign words and cults
• Decorative themes such as fauna and flora
• Modernity is the essential theme of the movement, being modern is being in tune with the world
• Nostalgia for the indigenous past, the cultures of Greco-Roman antiquity, and the Far East
• The ugliness of the cities, their vices and the bustle of the crowd
• Condition of man in the world
• José Martí is the precursor of modernism
• He is known as the pastor of Cuban independence
• In 1892 he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the Patria magazine.
• Ruben Dario is the father of modernism
• Jose Asuncion Silva, Amado Nervo
• Modernism in Puerto Rico marked a new renovation, archaisms, neologisms and foreign words were rescued, cosmopolitan poetry, romance, silva, sonnet, tenth, and madrigal are used, sensory images and Creole themes stand out
• Evaristo Rivera Chevremont approaches the Creole theme and praises the traditional music of the island.
• Luis Llorens Torres: poet and essayist, greatest exponent of modernism in Puerto Rico
• Nemesio Canales: lawyer, essayist and Puerto Rican writer