RECURSOS
DIDÁCTICOS

GENERALITIES: VISION OF THE MOVEMENT

The profound social dislocation generated by the liquidation of the Ancien Régime and its consequent transition to a liberal and bourgeois society opened, from the second third of the 19th century, a generalized crisis of traditional values, which directly affected enlightened philosophy and, more specifically, in the literary and artistic field, neoclassical or classicist aesthetics. Its ideal, the rigorous and methodical achievement of decorum, would be displaced from this moment on by the new romantic proposals. Nevertheless, the same multiform, if not paradoxical, nature of this transition has prevented critics from reaching general agreements on the fundamental contents of Hispanic Romanticism beyond its deep nationalism in search of the recovery of Christian values and, in general, those of the Middle Ages. Once the vision of some authors, with E. Allison Peers at the head, on the essentially romantic nature of Spain, manifested in the dramaturgy of the Golden Age, in certain authors of the eighteenth century, who linked with the authors of the following century, was overcome, also the interpretations of A. del Río, for whom romantic heterodoxy could never take root in Catholic Spain, have ended up being displaced since the seventies of the last century by more sociological positions, which try to link the evolution of aesthetic ideas with the great historical transformations that the entire nineteenth century witnessed. Within this line of argument, after an initial moment, in which the reception of Romanticism in Spain was taken as a fundamentally disruptive phenomenon linked to liberalism – such was the idea of R. Navas Ruiz for example -, in recent years some researchers, such as P. Sebold, have begun to insist on the continuity of the romantic movement with the neoclassical precedents, while others, such as D. Flitter or J. Hernando, pointed out the importance of its conservative components.

Denomination

Derived from English romantik, The term romantic appears for the first time in Spain in 1821, inserted in an article by Alberto Lista published in the pages of El Censor. Its use, however, converges with other terms, such as Ossianic, alluding to Ossian, the legendary Scottish bard, and also that of romance, referring to any implausible fiction and, therefore, foreign to the true fictions that characterized the novel. Romancesco was equivalent above all to everything related to the epic romances of chivalry and, more specifically, to the set of emotions that aroused the neo-medieval historical novel of the time.

Chronology

Pre-romanticism (1770-1800)

Although scholars such as Sebold defend the romantic nature of the sensibility of certain authors from the end of the 18th century, such as Cadalso, Jovellanos, Meléndez Valdés or Cienfuegos, the significance that seems to correspond to these authors is that of immediate precursors of romanticism based on the coordinates of a certain non-academic neoclassicism.

Clandestine Romanticism (1800-1830)

Before 1814 a series of translations of Rosseau, Chateaubriand, Goethe or of Osián They begin to leave traces in works such as La soledad (1812) or La tormenta by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862) and, in particular, in Ramiro, Conde de Lucena (1812, 1823) by Rafael de Húmara y Salamanca, a story of jealousy between Ramiro, his wife Isabel and the Moor Zaida set in Seville recently conquered by Ferdinand III, whose importance lies not only in its literary quality, which is scarce, but in being the first fully romantic creation in Spain. In his “Preliminary Speech” Húmara reveals himself as a traditionalist lover of Scott, Byron and Chateaubriand.

Romanticism (1830-1850)

The emergence of literary romanticism can be placed without great doubt between the third and fourth decades of the century, when such significant works as La conjuración de Venecia (1834) by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, Don Álvaro or la fuerza del sino (1835) by Duque de Rivas, El estudiante de Salamanca (1835?-1840?) or Poema del demonio (ca. 1839-1842) de G. García Tassara (1817-1875), without forgetting, in the field of the arts, works as significant as El Gran Capitan contemplating the corpse of the Duke of Nemours (1835) de Federico de Madrazo (1814-1894) or A reading of Zorrilla (1846) by Antonio María Esquivel (1806-1857).

Post-romanticism (1850-1870)

It is even more difficult to pinpoint the end of literary Romanticism. Although some critics maintain that a multiform Romanticism (symbolism, modernism, surrealism, etc.) has continued to exist until today, most canonically choose to place its end at the height of Realism, around the third quarter of the century.

Evolution

The beginnings of Spanish Romanticism are deeply marked in their literary aspect by what has been called the Calderonian controversy. In 1814, a year after his conversion to Catholicism, Nicolas Böhl de Faber (1770-1863), a deeply conservative German merchant established in Cádiz since 1794, published in the Mercurio Gaditano an article, “Schlegel’s reflections on the theater translated from German”, glossing the opinions of the Jena philosopher on the theater of Calderón de la Barca and in which There was a fiery defense of the absolute monarchy. The reply came, shortly after, from a Frenchman, José Joaquín de Mora (1783-1864), defender of the concepts of good taste of classical art and, therefore, faced with the idea of seeing in Calderón the most essential of Spanish literature. Following the publication by Böhl de Faber of the brochure Donde las dan las toman, which could have put Mora in a politically complicated situation, he reopened the controversy in 1817 from the pages of the Madrid newspaper Scientific and Literary Chronicle (then, El Constitucional), in defense of the new sensibility, decidedly opposed, aesthetically and also ideologically, to classicism and even to Enlightenment principles. Later were the interventions of a certain Cavaleri Pazos and of Antonio Alcalá-Galiano, this one in favor of Mora, the other supporting Böhl de Faber, who in 1820 collected all his articles, although with significant corrections, in Vindications of Calderón and of the ancient Spanish theater against those Frenchified in literature. In it its author demonstrated that he was very aware of European romanticism, from Schlegel to Sismondi and from Byron to Mme. de Staël. Still in 1838 Alcalá Galiano alluded to the technical tie that had closed the controversy. La etapa del Trienio Liberal (1820-1823) It is marked by the beginnings of costumbrismo, with works such as Mis ratos perdidos (1822), by Ramón Mesonero Romanos, followed by Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837) on the pages of El duende satírico del día (1828) and El pobrecito hablador (1832). Su producción estaba muy influenciada por los cuadros de costumbres de Eugenio de Tapia (1776-1860) or Sebastián Bedoya, but also by the European customs movement, especially the French one. Between 1823 and 1824, the absolutist reaction had already begun, in addition to publishing Ramiro, Conde de Lucena (1823) by Rafael de Húmara y Salamanca, the newspaper was published in Barcelona El Europeo, in whose pages Spanish, German and Italian collaborators made a passionate defense of medievalist, Christian and national romanticism and a moderate criticism of French classicism. The magazine included articles, such as those by Aribau, that advocated the revaluation of the Middle Ages, disseminated Schiller’s theories or reviewed English translations of Hindu poems, while López Soler addressed the dispute between romantics and classics, defending the virtues of each of them. they. The persecution to which they were subjected during the Ominous Decade (1823-1833) forced the exile in Paris or London of numerous authors, such as Mora, Alcalá Galiano, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, Ángel de Saavedra, Duque de Rivas (1791-1865), Eduardo Manuel de Gorostiza (1789-1851) and also from other younger authors, José de Espronceda (1808-1842) or Eugenio de Ochoa (1815-1836) for example. This allowed them to come into direct contact with European romanticism, while in Spain there was a neoclassical resurgence sponsored by the censorship, characterized by a certain resurgence of the most banal Moratinian comedy and the predominance of translations, among them those of Byron or Scott. It should be highlighted, however, the editorial work undertaken at this time, from Valencia, by Ferrer de Orga and, above all, for Mariano de Cabrerizo, whose house welcomed Los bandos de Castilla o el caballero del cisne (1830), by Ramón López Soler (1806-1836), of declared Scottish influence. In Barcelona, a prominent figure in the publishing world of the time was Antonio Bergnes de las Casas (1800-1879), responsible for the implementation of romanticism in Catalonia. To that of Cabrerizo and Bergnes must be added the editorial activity, in Madrid, of Repullés, responsible for the Collection of original Spanish historical novels (1833-1834), which hosted works of Larra, Espronceda, Patricio de la Escosura (1807-1878), etc. Special mention can also be Manuel Rivadeneyra, ounder, together with Aribau, of the very prestigious collection Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (1845-1862). As for the magazines, they cannot fail to be cited, in addition to the Mercurio Gaditano and of Diario Mercantil, in Cádiz, and of El Europeo (1823-1824), in Barcelona, Madrid publications, such as El Censor (1820-1822), of illustrated inspiration, and especially El duende satírico del día (1828), driven by Larra. His rival was El Correo Literario y Mercantil (1828-1833), by José María Carnerero, founder also of Cartas Españolas (1831-1832), to which happened Revista Española (1832-1836), contemporary of La Abeja (1834-1836), more moderate and classicist in nature. In Barcelona it is necessary to refer to El Vapor (1833-1838), of regionalist orientation. Its development benefited from the talent of such outstanding illustrators as Leonardo Alenza (1807-1845), Vicente Castellón (1815-1872), Antonio Esquivel (1806-1857), Federico Madrazo (1815-1894), Javier Parcerisa (1803-1876), Genaro Pérez Villamil (1807-1854), etc. Gatherings and associations such as those “la barcelonesa” encouraged the situation. Sociedad filosófica (1814-1821), by Aribau, or that promoted by Mariano de Cabrerizo around 1825 in his bookstore in Valencia. In Madrid they were Los numantinos (1823-1825), of a more political nature, and, especially, since 1829, that of El Parnasillo, the most important of all of them. Other convergent initiatives were of a more institutional nature. In 1835 the Madrid Ateneo was refounded, successor to the one that existed between 1820 and 1824, with the aim of setting an example of ideological coexistence in the three sections into which it was divided: the Academy, the Teaching Institute and the Literary Circle. Two years later the Liceo was born, organizer of floral games and editor of El Liceo Artístico y Literario. It had its own theater, directed by Ventura de la Vega.

Sources

Spanish Golden Century

The inspiration of the dramaturgy of the Golden Age tradition was maintained throughout the 18th century through a series of adaptations and reworkings sponsored by the Spanish enlightened, more out of patriotism than aesthetic conviction, in reaction to criticism based on the classical canon by foreign authors. For their part, the romantics, while – from liberal positions – emptied the tradition of the Golden Age of ideological content, especially religious dogmatism, monarchical absolutism, fanaticism of honor, assumed its anticlassicism, the mixture of genres, the taste for the popular, the recourse to historical themes of the country.

Ilustración

The inspiration of the dramaturgy of the Golden Age tradition was maintained throughout the 18th century through a series of adaptations and reworkings sponsored by the Spanish enlightened, more out of patriotism than aesthetic conviction, in reaction to criticism based on the classical canon by foreign authors. For their part, the romantics, while – from liberal positions – emptied the tradition of the Golden Age of ideological content, especially religious dogmatism, monarchical absolutism, fanaticism of honor, assumed its anticlassicism, the mixture of genres, the taste for the popular, the recourse to historical themes of the country.

Liberalism

In general, the writers of Spanish Romanticism opted for politically liberal attitudes. There were few who, like Böhl de Faber, They chose to support Fernandino absolutism or, later, the counterrevolutionary project of the Carlists, as happened with Francisco Navarro Villoslada (1818-1895). Ello no significa que, dentro de ese liberalismo general, las posiciones más conservadoras fueran minoritarias, pero sí que aceptaban las ideas de estado nacional, monarquía controlada y libertades esenciales.

Topics

To a large extent, the theme of romanticism was organized around the heartbreaking tension between the subjectivity and individual genius of the artist, on the one hand, and the the outside world, on the other hand. To the first pole belongs all the exaltation of the world of feelings. Love and heartbreak, whether following the path of sentimental intimacy or that of unleashed, absolute, obsessive and antisocial passion, always tragic, is the great theme of romanticism. Its treatment generated images of women as “angels of love”, beautiful, naive and submissive; or of the femme fatale, perverse and vengeful; sometimes a victim. Life, conceived as a metaphysical burden, only bearable thanks to love, constituted another great theme of reflection. In the absence of the consolation of the loved one, death For romantics, it became a permanent travel companion and the irremediable horizon of a meaningless, melancholic and empty existence, close to an agony that demanded suicide as the only liberating solution. It should not be surprising, then, that religion it was also a recurring theme among the authors of romanticism, who usually approach it from an intimate, subjective, undogmatic perspective and, therefore, clearly opposed to the hated Inquisition, whose ability to limit freedom of expression was far from having disappeared. In some extreme cases, dissatisfaction with ecclesiastical orthodoxy manifested itself in issues linked to Satanism, to rebellion against divinity. At the other pole of this tension, the one that affects the projection of the interior in the world, two converging themes of frequent treatment appear. The History, The national past, especially periods such as the Middle Ages or the Golden Age, considered antithetical to classical antiquity, is currently, along with themes linked to the Eastern world, a permanent source of inspiration for writers and artists in general. It is also very important everything that affects the des conflits sociaux, qui éveillent chez ces auteurs l’engagement et la conscience d’être appelés à la mission de lutter, au nom de l’humanitarisme, pour l’obtention de la liberté d’expression, de culte ou de couple, dans le processus de construction des États nationaux.

Aesthetics

Local color

Romantic authors, painters no less than writers, rejected all universalist abstraction, clinging to the concrete and the immediate. Local geography and popular customs thus became a constant. Nature, wild and savage, triumphant over the insignificance of man, was presented as animated, that is, appropriate to the soul of the characters, whose feelings were, in turn, copies of natural forces, sometimes tormented, sometimes self-absorbed.

Fancy

The Romantics placed constant emphasis on any form of knowledge that implied an alternative to rational reflection. Intuition and premonition, imagination and fantasy, dreams and madness were conceived by them as privileged ways of accessing authentic and vital knowledge, the keys to existence.

Tipos

The romantic treatment of characters was characterised more by their predictable behaviour than by their psychological richness and depth. They were therefore more social symbols than autonomous subjects; that is, archetypes, always endowed with a high level of gestures, which thus externalised the inner conflict. From this were born the figures of the passionate hero, endowed with all the medieval virtues (faith, nobility, courage, loyalty, chivalry), permanently pursued by a fatal destiny, or that of the cunning, tyrannical and vengeful antihero.

Language

The Romantics replaced the great mythological references of classicist aesthetics with other motifs much closer to the author, although no less idealized, hence their expressive chasteness, purified of foreign words, especially Gallicisms. In close connection with this change, all forms of hierarchization in the use of language were rejected, especially in the field of vocabulary. At the same time, as a means of producing the astonishment of the reader and the spectator, there was a tendency to emphasize the emphatic character of the expression, the linguistic correlate of the gesture, as well as the taste for rhetorical excess.

Genres

In contrast to the rigid separation of genres typical of neoclassical precepts, romanticism defended their mixture without any other criterion than the sovereign will of the author. Thus, drama prevailed, in which tragic and comic elements were fused, and even the use of prose and verse in the same work. In poetry, more conservative in this respect, it was not unusual to mix different meters, while epic poetry approached the dramatic genre and narrative poetry did so to the novel through the story or legend.

“Manifestos”

Agustín Durán (1789-1862)

Since his Discourse on the influence that modern criticism has had on the decline of ancient Spanish theater (1828), he tried to promote a specific formula for Spanish theater based on the theses of Schlegel, on the one hand, and those of Alberto de Lista, for another. Clearly conservative in tone, his proposal, guided by the observations of the Böhl de Faber, it was based on the recovery and revaluation of the theater of the Golden Age, the popular poetics contained in the Ballads and, in general, the Christian aesthetics of the medieval past, opting, as far as formal issues are concerned, for a flexible use. of the classical rules of units.

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853)

Before looking at much more traditionalist positions, he defended from his Opening Speech at the College of Cáceres (1829) the emergence of romanticism on the cultural heritage that followed the fall and ruin of the Roman Empire, thus linking it with the rise of Germanic culture and Christianity, in which, under the influence of Byron, Scott or Mme. de Staël, he wanted to see the roots of authentic European culture.

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa

He composed some Notes on Historical Drama (1830), included in La conjuración de Venecia, where he departed from neoclassical poetics to accept, following A. Durán, the need to connect literature and national character, while advocating the usefulness of a historically reliable drama, but endowed with the literary beauty and emotion of a language appropriate to the plot and characters. He rejected the unity of place and, moderately, that of time, although not that of action.

Antonio Alcalá-Galiano

In the “Prologue” to Moro Expósito (1834), by the Duke of Rivas, he started from the polemic between classics and romantics, defending with Schlegal the connection of creative phenomena with their own historical and national circumstances. Good literature, in his opinion, was that which knew how to express and adapt itself naturally to such circumstances, whether they were of a classical type, as occurred in the Mediterranean countries during the Renaissance; or of a romantic type, as occurred in the countries of northern Europe during the Middle Ages. After reviewing the main European authors, he defined a Romanticism inspired by the strong emotions of the Middle Ages or by the authenticity of exotic cultures, by the inner conflicts of the individual man or by those that affect him as part of a collective, national subject.

Pau Milá y Fontanals

He proposed in his “Clasicismo y romanticismo”, included in his literary essays (1836), the existence of three orders: false classicism, a mere imitator; true classicism, simple, harmonious and sensible; and romanticism, mysterious and spiritual. Once the first was eliminated, the rest were fully valid within their own coordinates.

Juan Donoso Cortés

author of the essay “Clasicismo y Romanticismo”, which appeared in El Correo Nacional (1838), where he tried to summarize the controversy, examining the historical roots of each of the movements, concluding with the validity of both based on their complementarity.

Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch

He wrote “Discurso sobre las unidades dramáticas”, which appeared in the pages of El Panorama (1839), to defend a flexible, non-dogmatic use of the three dramatic rules, especially those of time and place, due to the unlikely situations they can give rise to.

LITERATURE

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