Spanish Literature
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Spanish literature is literature ( Spanish poetry,
prose Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...
, and drama) written in the
Spanish language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...
within the territory that presently constitutes the Kingdom of
Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
. Its development coincides and frequently intersects with that of other literary traditions from regions within the same territory, particularly Catalan literature, Galician intersects as well with Latin, Jewish, and Arabic literary traditions of the
Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...
. The literature of
Spanish America Spanish America refers to the Spanish territories in the Americas during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term "Spanish America" was specifically used during the territories' Spanish Empire, imperial era between 15th and 19th centur ...
is an important branch of Spanish literature, with its own particular characteristics dating back to the earliest years of Spain’s conquest of the Americas (see
Latin American literature Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of Latin America. Latin American literature rose to particular pro ...
).


Overview

The Roman conquest and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula beginning in the 3rd century BC brought a Latin culture to Spanish territories. The
Muslim conquest The Muslim conquests, Muslim invasions, Islamic conquests, including Arab conquests, Arab Islamic conquests, also Iranian Muslim conquests, Turkic Muslim conquests etc. *Early Muslim conquests **Ridda Wars **Muslim conquest of Persia ***Muslim conq ...
in 711 CE brought the cultures of West Asia and the North Africa to the peninsula, creating Andalusi literary traditions. In medieval Spanish literature, the earliest recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based literature mix Muslim, Jewish, and Christian culture. One of the notable works is the
epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...
Cantar de Mio Cid ''El Cantar de mio Cid'', or ''El Poema de mio Cid'' ("The Song of My Cid"; "The Poem of My Cid"), is an anonymous '' cantar de gesta'' and the oldest preserved Castilian epic poem. Based on a true story, it tells of the deeds of the Castilian h ...
, composed some time between 1140 and 1207. Spanish prose gained popularity in the mid-thirteenth century. Lyric poetry in the Middle Ages includes popular poems and the courtly poetry of the nobles. During the 15th century the pre-Renaissance occurred and literary production increased greatly. In the Renaissance important topics were poetry, religious literature, and prose. In the 16th century the first Spanish
novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
s appeared, ''
Lazarillo de Tormes ''The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities'' ( ) is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its anticlerical content. It was published simultaneously in three cities in 1554: Alcalá de Henares, Burgos a ...
'' and ''
Guzmán de Alfarache ''Guzmán de Alfarache'' () is a picaresque novel written by Mateo Alemán and published in two parts: the first in Madrid in 1599 with the title , and the second in 1604, titled '. The works tells the first person adventures of a ''picaro'', a ...
''. In the Baroque era of the 17th century important works were the prose of
Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...
and
Baltasar Gracián Baltasar Gracián y Morales (; 8 January 16016 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte de Gracián, Belmonte, n ...
. A notable author was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, famous for his masterpiece '' Don Quixote de la Mancha''. In this novel Cervantes consolidated the form of literature that the
picaresque novel The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for ' rogue' or 'rascal') is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrup ...
had established in Spain to a fictional narrative that became the template for many novelists throughout the history of Spanish literature. In the Enlightenment era of the 18th century, notable works include the prose of Feijoo, Jovellanos, and Cadalso; the lyric of Juan Meléndez Valdés, Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego), and the theater, with Leandro Fernández de Moratín,
Ramón de la Cruz Ramón de la Cruz (28 March 1731 – 5 March 1794) was a Spanish neoclassical dramatist. Born in Madrid, he was a clerk in the ministry of finance. He is the author of nearly 400 ''sainete A sainete (farce or titbit) was a popular Spanish com ...
, and Vicente García de la Huerta. In
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
(beginning of the 19th century) important topics are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets; prose; the theater, with Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas), José Zorrilla, and other authors. In Realism (end of the 19th century), which is mixed with Naturalism, important topics are the novel, with Juan Valera, José María de Pereda,
Benito Pérez Galdós Benito María de los Dolores Pérez Galdós (; 10 May 1843 – 4 January 1920) was a Spanish Spanish Realist literature, realist novelist. He was a leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Mi ...
,
Emilia Pardo Bazán Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa, Countess of Pardo Bazán (; 16 September 185112 May 1921) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor and professor. Her naturalism (literature), naturalis ...
, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), Armando Palacio Valdés, and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez; poetry, with Ramón de Campoamor, Gaspar Núñez de Arce, and other poets; the theater, with
José Echegaray José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (19 April 183214 September 1916) was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, wikt:statesman, statesman, and one of the leading Spaniards, Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. He was awarded t ...
, Manuel Tamayo y Baus, and other dramatists; and the literary critics, emphasizing Menéndez Pelayo. In
Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
several currents appear: Parnasianism, Symbolism,
Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...
, and
Creationism Creationism is the faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...
. The destruction of Spain's fleet in Cuba by the U.S. in 1898 provoked a crisis in Spain. A group of younger writers, among them
Miguel de Unamuno Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (; ; 29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca. His major philosophical ...
,
Pío Baroja Pío Baroja y Nessi (28 December 1872 – 30 October 1956) was a Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98. He was a member of an illustrious family. His brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his ne ...
, and
José Martínez Ruiz José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz, better known by his pseudonym Azorín (; 8 June 1873 – 2 March 1967), was a Spanish novelist, essayist and literary critic. Biography José Martínez Ruiz was born in the village of Monòver, Spain i ...
(Azorín), made changes to literature's form and content. By the year 1914—the year of the outbreak of the First World War and of the publication of the first major work of the generation's leading voice,
José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...
—a number of slightly younger writers had established their own place within the Spanish cultural field. Leading voices include the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, the academics and essayists
Ramón Menéndez Pidal Ramón Menéndez Pidal (; 13 March 1869 – 14 November 1968) was a Spanish philologist and historian."Ramon Menendez Pidal", ''Almanac of Famous People'' (2011) ''Biography in Context'', Gale, Detroit He worked extensively on the history of t ...
,
Gregorio Marañón Gregorio Marañón y Posadillo, OWL (; 19 May 1887 – 27 March 1960) was a Spanish physician, scientist, historian, writer and philosopher. He married Dolores Moya in 1911, and they had four children (Carmen, Belén, María Isabel and Gregor ...
,
Manuel Azaña Manuel Azaña Díaz (; 10 January 1880 – 3 November 1940) was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1933 and 1936), organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the la ...
, Eugenio d'Ors, and Ortega y Gasset, and the novelists Gabriel Miró, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, and
Ramón Gómez de la Serna Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel. Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...
. Around 1920 a younger group of writers—mostly poets—began publishing works that from their beginnings revealed the extent to which younger artists were absorbing the literary experimentation of the writers of 1898 and 1914. Poets were closely tied to formal academia. Novelists such as Benjamín Jarnés, Rosa Chacel, Francisco Ayala, and Ramón J. Sender were equally experimental and academic. The
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
had a devastating impact on Spanish writing. Among the handful of civil war poets and writers, Miguel Hernández stands out. During the early dictatorship (1939–1955), literature followed dictator
Francisco Franco Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
's reactionary vision of a second, Catholic Spanish golden age. By the mid-1950s, just as with the novel, a new generation which had only experienced the Spanish Civil War in childhood was coming of age. By the early 1960s, Spanish authors moved towards a restless literary experimentation. When Franco died in 1975, the important work of establishing democracy had an immediate impact on Spanish letters. Over the next several years a wealth of young new writers, among them
Juan José Millás Juan José Millás (born 1946) is a Spanish writer and winner of the 1990 Premio Nadal. He was born in Valencia, Spain, Valencia and has spent most of his life in Madrid, Spain, Madrid, where he studied philosophy and literature at the Universida ...
, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, Luis Mateo Díez, José María Merino, Félix de Azúa, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Enrique Vila-Matas, Carme Riera, and later Antonio Muñoz Molina and
Almudena Grandes María de la Almudena Grandes Hernández (7 May 1960 – 27 November 2021) was a Spanish writer. Author of 14 novels and three short-story collections, her work has been translated into twenty languages and frequently adapted to film. She won t ...
, would begin carving out a prominent place for themselves within the Spanish cultural field.


Pre-medieval literature

The Roman conquest and occupation of the peninsula, spanning from the 3rd century BCE to the 5h century CE, brought a fully developed Latin culture to Spanish territories. While the invasion of Germanic tribes in the fifth century CE put an end to Roman Spain, the tribes’ relative lack of advanced culture, including any kind of literary tradition, meant that any written literature produced in the Iberian Peninsula continued along Romanized lines. Outstanding amongst the works produced is Saint Isidore of Seville’s () ''
Etymologiae (Latin for 'Etymologies'), also known as the ('Origins'), usually abbreviated ''Orig.'', is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by the influential Christian bishop Isidore of Seville () towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged t ...
'', an attempted summa of all classical knowledge. Called “the last scholar of the ancient world", St. Isidore penned theological and proto-scientific treatises, letters, and a series of histories that would serve as models for the rest of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. The arrival of Muslim invaders in 711 CE brought the cultures of the Middle and Far East to the Iberian Peninsula and ultimately to all of Europe. During the era of relative religious tolerance that followed, writers such as the Jewish theologian
Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...
(1135–1204) or the Muslim polymath (1126–1198)
Averroes Ibn Rushd (14 April 112611 December 1198), archaically Latinization of names, Latinized as Averroes, was an Arab Muslim polymath and Faqīh, jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astron ...
penned works of theology, science, philosophy, and mathematics that would have lasting impacts on Hebrew and Muslim philosophy and prove essential to the flowering of the European Renaissance centuries later. While none of their works can be considered direct ancestors of a Spanish literary tradition, it was out of the cultural milieu fostered by such intellectual energy that the first written manifestations of a Spanish literature proper arise.


Medieval Spanish literature


Andalusi literature

The period of Islamic rule in Iberia from 711 to 1492 brought many new literary traditions to Spain. Most literature at this time was produced in standard Arabic, though
poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...
and other forms of literature of the Jewish golden age found expression in
Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic (; ; ) sometimes referred as Sharh, are a group of different ethnolects within the branches of the Arabic language used by jewish communities. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam, has been in some ways distinct ...
or
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
.
Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...
, for example, wrote his magnum opus ''
The Guide for the Perplexed ''The Guide for the Perplexed'' (; ; ) is a work of Jewish theology by Maimonides. It seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology by finding rational explanations for many events in the text. It was written in Judeo-Arabic ...
'' in Arabic with
Hebrew script The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...
. Other major literary figures of the time include
Ibn Arabi Ibn Arabi (July 1165–November 1240) was an Andalusian Sunni Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest com ...
, Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, Ibn al-Khatib,
Ibn Zaydún Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad Ibn Zaydouni al-Makhzūmī (; 1003–1071), or simply known as Ibn Zaydoun () or Abenzaidun, was an Arab Andalusian poet of Córdoba, Spain, Cordoba and Seville. He was considered the greatest neoclassical poet of al-Andalus ...
and Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya. Important literary styles include the muwashah,
maqama The ''maqāma'' (Arabic: مقامة aˈqaːma literally "assembly"; plural ''maqāmāt'', مقامات aqaːˈmaːt is an (originally) Arabic prosimetric literary genre of picaresque short stories originating in the tenth century C.E.Qian, ...
, and nawba. Important works include ''
Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd ''al-ʿIqd al-Farīd'' (''The Unique Necklace'', ) is an anthology attempting to encompass 'all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual' (or ''Adab (literature), adab''), composed b ...
'', '' Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'', ''
The Incoherence of the Incoherence ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
'', and ''
Hadith Bayad wa Riyad ''Hadīth Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ'' (, "The Story of Bayad and Riyad") is a 13th-century Arabic love story. The main characters of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from Damascus; Riyad, a well-educated slave girl in the court of ...
''.


The kharjas

The earliest recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based literature date from the same time and location, the rich mix of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures in Muslim Spain, in which
Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...
,
Averroes Ibn Rushd (14 April 112611 December 1198), archaically Latinization of names, Latinized as Averroes, was an Arab Muslim polymath and Faqīh, jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astron ...
, and others worked. The Jarchas, dating from the 9th to the 12th centuries C.E., were short poems spoken in local colloquial Hispano-Romance dialects, known as Mozarabic, but written in Arabic script. The Jarchas appeared at the end of longer poetry written in Arabic or Hebrew known as muwashshah, which were lengthy glosses on the ideas expressed in the jarchas. Typically spoken in the voice of a woman, the jarchas express the anxieties of love, particularly of its loss. This combination of Hispano-Romance expression with Arabic script, only discovered in 1948, locates the rise of a Spanish literary tradition in the cultural heterogeneity that characterized Medieval Spanish society and politics. However, the Mozarabic language of the Jarchas appears to be a separate Romance language whose evolution from Vulgar Latin paralleled that of Castilian Spanish rather than deriving from or fusing into the latter. Hence, while the relatively recent discovery of the Jarchas challenges pride of chronological place that belonged for so long to the ''Poema del Cid'' (El Cantar de mío Cid) (1140 CE) in the history of Spanish literature, they cannot be seen as a precursor to Spain's great epic poem. What the discovery of the jarchas makes clear instead is that from its origins, the literature of Spain has arisen out of and born witness to a rich, heterogeneous mix of cultures and languages. LIPSKI, John M.: "Review of ''El Mozarabe de Valencia'' by Leopoldo Penarroja Torrejon", ''International Journal of Middle East Studies''.Vol. 24, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 519-52

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Cantar de Mio Cid

The
epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...
Cantar de Mio Cid ''El Cantar de mio Cid'', or ''El Poema de mio Cid'' ("The Song of My Cid"; "The Poem of My Cid"), is an anonymous '' cantar de gesta'' and the oldest preserved Castilian epic poem. Based on a true story, it tells of the deeds of the Castilian h ...
was written about a real man—his battles, conquests, and daily life. The poet, name unknown, wrote the epic in about 1140 and Cid supposedly died forty years before in 1099. This epic represents realism, because nothing was exaggerated and the details are very real, even the geography correctly portrays the areas in which Cid traveled and lived. Unlike other European epics, the poem is not idealized and there is no presence of supernatural beings. It has
assonance Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar phonemes in words or syllables that occur close together, either in terms of their vowel phonemes (e.g., ''lean green meat'') or their consonant phonemes (e.g., ''Kip keeps capes ''). However, in ...
instead of
rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...
and its lines vary in length, the most common length being fourteen syllables. This type of verse is known as ''mester de juglaria'' (verse form of the minstrels). The epic is divided into three parts, also known as cantos.


Mester de Juglaría

Medieval Spanish poets recognized the Mester de Juglaría as a literary form written by the minstrels (juglares) and composed of varying line length and use of assonance instead of rhyme. These poems were sung to uneducated audiences, nobles and peasants alike.


Mester de Clerecía

This Castilian narrative poetry known as the Mester de Clerecía became popular in the thirteenth century. It is the verse form of the learned poets, usually clerics (hence the name 'clerecía'). The poetry was formal, with carefully counted syllables in each line. Popular themes were Christian legends, lives of saints and tales from classical antiquity. The poems were recited to villagers in public plazas. Two traits separate this form from the mester de juglaría: didacticism and erudition. Gonzalo de Berceo was one of the greatest advocates of this school, writing on religious subjects.


Spanish prose

Spanish prose gained popularity in the mid-thirteenth century when King
Alfonso X of Castile Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, ; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, Kingdom of León, León and Kingdom of Galicia, Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. During the April 1257 Imperial election, election of 1 ...
gave support and recognition to the writing form. He, with the help of his groups of intellectuals, directed the composition of many prose works including ''Las siete partidas,'' the first modern book of laws of the land written in the people's language. Another work was La primera crónica general which accounted for the history of Spain from the creation until the end of Alfonso's father's reign, San Fernando. For his direction of these works and many others he directed, Alfonso X is called the father of Spanish prose. His nephew, Don Juan Manuel is famous for his prose work '' El Conde Lucanor'' which is a frame story or short stories within an overall story. In this work, the Conde Lucanor seeks advice from his wise counselor, Patronio, who gives the advice through the telling of stories. Juan Manuel also wrote lesser-known works such as ''El libro de los estados'' on the social classes and ''El libro del caballero y escudero'' on philosophical discussions. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, writer Fernando del Pulgar (1436-1490?) created a new type of prose named the ''verbal portrait.'' This form is demonstrated by Pulgar's work ''Claros varones de Castilla'' in which he represents the detailed lives of twenty-four distinguished contemporaries. He explores their moral and psychological natures as well as physical traits. Pulgar was the official historian of the monarchs Fernando and Isabel, the famous
Catholic Monarchs The Catholic Monarchs were Isabella I of Castile, Queen Isabella I of Crown of Castile, Castile () and Ferdinand II of Aragon, King Ferdinand II of Crown of Aragón, Aragon (), whose marriage and joint rule marked the ''de facto'' unification of ...
of Spain. This position gave him close encounters with the characters in this book, making the work realistic and detailed.


Lyric poetry of the Middle Ages

Lyric poetry in the Middle Ages can be divided into three groups: the ''jarchas,'' the popular poems originating from folk-songs sung by commoners, and the courtly poetry of the nobles.
Alfonso X of Castile Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, ; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, Kingdom of León, León and Kingdom of Galicia, Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. During the April 1257 Imperial election, election of 1 ...
fits into the third group with his series of three hundred poems, written in Galician: ''Las cantigas de Santa María.'' Another poet, Juan Ruiz, or the Arcipreste de Hita is an outstanding lyricist of the fourteenth century. His only work, ''Libro de buen amor'' is a framework tale in which he includes translations from Ovid, satires, little poems called '' serranillas'', twenty-nine fables, a sermon on Christian armor, and many lyric poems that praise the Virgin Mary. Poet ''Íñigo López de Mendoza,'' the Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458), begins to show the movement away from the traditions of the Middle Ages. He shows a knowledge of Latin authors and familiarity with the works of
Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
and
Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...
. Mendoza was also the first to introduce the sonnet into Spanish literature. The last great poet of the Middle Ages is Jorge Manrique. He is famous for his work which laments the death of his father, Coplas a la muerte de su padre. In this piece, Manrique shows classical feelings by expressing himself in a universal manner (all things come to an end). He is still considered a poet of the Middle Ages in that he finds peace and finality in religion.


Renaissance

The 15th century may be thought of as a pre-Renaissance period. Literary production increases greatly. Outstanding poets of this century include
Juan de Mena ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. The name is of Hebrew origin and has the meaning "God has been gracious." It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world and in the Phili ...
and Íñigo López de Mendoza (Marquess of Santillana). Spanish literature of the Middle Ages concludes with '' La Celestina'' by Fernando de Rojas. Important Renaissance themes are poetry, with Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán; religious literature, with Fray Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz, and Santa Teresa de Jesús; and prose, with the anonymous '' El Lazarillo de Tormes''. Among the principal features of the Renaissance were the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly patronage, the development of perspective in painting, and advances in science. The most important characteristics of the Renaissance are: * The prevalence of natural, uncomplicated language, avoiding affectation, ''amaneramiento'' and the over-refined phrase, producing simple vocabulary and straightforward syntax. * Themes such as love - conceived from the platonic point of view; nature - as somewhat idyllic (bucolic); pagan mythology - concerned with female beauty and the histories of the gods, following always the same classical ideal. In relation to these themes, various Renaissance points exist (???) some of them taken from the classical world: ** ''Carpe Diem'', ("seize the day" or "take advantage of the moment"), which recommends the enjoyment of life before the arrival of old age. ** ''Collige, virgo, rosas'' which literary means "Pick virgin the roses" and is a metaphor similar to '' Carpe Diem'' but applied to female beauty, described always following the same plan: a young blonde, with serene, clear eyes, white skin, red lips, rosy cheeks, etc. ** The ''Beatus Ille'' or praise of rural life, away from material things, as opposed to life in the city, with its dangers and intrigues. ** The ''
Locus Amoenus (Latin for "pleasant place") is a literary topos involving an idealized place of safety or comfort. A is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland, or a group of idyllic islands, sometimes with connotations of Eden or Elysium. Er ...
'' or description of nature in all its idyllic perfection. File:Jorge Manrique portrait.jpg, Jorge Manrique File:Fernando-de-Rojas.jpg, Fernando de Rojas File:Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.jpg,
Bartolomé de las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican Order, OP ( ; ); 11 November 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a Spanish clergyman, writer, and activist best known for his work as an historian and social reformer. He arrived in Hispaniola as a layman, then became ...
File:Attributed to el Greco - Portrait of Juan de Ávila - Google Art Project.jpg, John of Ávila File:Retrato de hombre con la cruz de caballero de Alcántara.jpg, Garcilaso de la Vega File:Retrato de Diego Hurtado de Mendoza recortado.jpg, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza File:SantaTeresa.jpg,
Teresa of Ávila Teresa of Ávila (born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada; 28March 15154or 15October 1582), also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer. Active during the Counter-Re ...
File:Retrato de Fray Luis de León.jpg, Luis de León File:AlonsoDeErcilla.jpg,
Alonso de Ercilla Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (7 August 153329 November 1594) was a Spanish soldier and poet, born in Madrid. While in Chile (1556–63) he fought against the Araucanians (Mapuche), and there he began the epic poem '' La Araucana'', considered one ...
File:Fernando de Herrera el Divino.jpg,
Fernando de Herrera Fernando de Herrera (~1534–1597), called "El Divino", was a 16th-century Spanish poet and man of letters. He was born in Seville. Much of what is known about him comes from ''Libro de descripción de verdaderos retratos de illustres y memorabl ...
File:Zurbarán (atribuido)-John of the Cross-1656.jpg,
John of the Cross St. John of the Cross (; ; né Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; 24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, mystic, and Carmelite friar of ''Converso'' ancestry. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, ...


Baroque

In the Baroque of the 17th century important topics are the prose of
Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...
and
Baltasar Gracián Baltasar Gracián y Morales (; 8 January 16016 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte de Gracián, Belmonte, n ...
; the theater is notable (
Lope de Vega Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (; 25 November 156227 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque literature. In the literature of ...
,
Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (17 January 160025 May 1681) (, ; ) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished Spanish Baroque literature, poets and ...
, and Tirso de Molina); and poetry with
Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic prebendary for the Church of Córdoba. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widel ...
(who is a Culteranist) and
Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...
(who is a Conceptist). In the works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra notable novels are '' La Galatea'' and '' Don Quixote de la Mancha''. The Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The Baroque is characterized by the following points: * Pessimism: The Renaissance had not achieved its purpose of imposing harmony and perfection in the world, as the humanists intended, nor had it made man happier; wars and social inequality continued to be present; pain and calamities were commonplace throughout Europe. An intellectual pessimism took hold, which increased as time passed. This was shown by the angry character of the comedies of that epoch, and by rascal characters on which the
picaresque novel The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for ' rogue' or 'rascal') is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrup ...
s are based. * Disillusionment: As the Renaissance ideals failed, and, in the case of Spain, political power was being dispelled, disillusionment continued to arise in literature. Many cases recall those of two centuries before, with the ''Danza de la Muerte'' or Manrique's ''Coplas a la muerte de su padre''. Quevedo said that life is formed by "successions of deceased". Newborns turn into the deceased, and diapers into the shroud that covers lifeless bodies. This leads to the conclusion that nothing is important except obtaining eternal salvation. * Worry about the passing of time. * Loss of confidence in the Renaissance ideals. File:Juan de la Cueva (1543-1612).jpg, Juan de la Cueva File:Cervantes Jáuregui.jpg,
Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelist ...
File:Retrato de Mateo Alemán.jpg, Mateo Alemán File:Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez - Luis de Góngora y Argote - Google Art Project.jpg,
Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic prebendary for the Church of Córdoba. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widel ...
File:LopedeVega.jpg,
Lope de Vega Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (; 25 November 156227 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque literature. In the literature of ...
File:Suarez LOC hec.13754 (cropped).jpg, Francisco Suárez File:Guillén de Castro-D Quixote de la Mancha comedia en tres jornades y en vers.jpg, Guillén de Castro File:Tirso de molina.jpg, Tirso de Molina File:Francisco de Quevedo (Pacheco).jpg,
Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...
File:Juan Ruiz de Alarcon.jpg, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón File:Las Glorias Nacionales, 1852 "D. Pedro Calderón de la Barca" (4013195639).jpg,
Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (17 January 160025 May 1681) (, ; ) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished Spanish Baroque literature, poets and ...
File:Gracián Graus.jpg,
Baltasar Gracián Baltasar Gracián y Morales (; 8 January 16016 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte de Gracián, Belmonte, n ...


Enlightenment

In the Enlightenment of the 18th century, with the arrival of "the lights" to Spain, important topics are the prose of Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo,
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (born Gaspar Melchor de Jove y Llanos, 5 January 1744 – 27 November 1811) was a Spain, Spanish Spanish Enlightenment literature, neoclassical statesman, author, philosopher and a major figure of the Age of Enlighte ...
, and José Cadalso; the lyric of the Salmantine school (with Juan Meléndez Valdés), the lyric of the Madrilenian group (with the story-tellers Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego), and the lyric of the Sevillian school; and also the theater, with Leandro Fernández de Moratín,
Ramón de la Cruz Ramón de la Cruz (28 March 1731 – 5 March 1794) was a Spanish neoclassical dramatist. Born in Madrid, he was a clerk in the ministry of finance. He is the author of nearly 400 ''sainete A sainete (farce or titbit) was a popular Spanish com ...
and Vicente García de la Huerta. Enlightenment thinkers sought to apply systematic thinking to all forms of human activity, carrying it to the ethical and governmental spheres in exploration of the individual, society and the state. Three phases in the Spanish literature of the 18th century are distinguished: * Anti-Baroquism (until approximately 1750): It fights against the style of the preceding Baroque, which is considered excessively rhetorical and twisted. The recreational literature is not cultivated, but they are more interested in the essay and satire, utilizing the language with simplicity and purity. * Neoclassicism (until the end of the 18th century): It is strongly influenced by French and Italian classicism. The writers also imitate the old classics (Greek and Roman); its boom extended since the reign of Fernando VI until the end of the century. * Pre-Romanticism (end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century): The influence of the English philosopher John Locke, together with that of the French Étienne Bonnot of Condillac, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot, will cause a new feeling, dissatisfaction with the tyranny of reason, that emphasizes the right of the individuals to express their personal emotions (repressed then by the neoclassicals), among which figures fundamentally love. This current announces the decline of Neoclassicism and opens the door to Romanticism.


Romanticism

Early Romanticism appeared with the singular figure of Manuel José Quintana. In Romanticism (beginning of the 19th century) important topics are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets; prose, which can have several forms (the historical novel, scientific prose, the description of regional customs, journalism —where Mariano José de Larra can be mentioned—; the theater, with Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas), José Zorrilla, and other authors. In the latter romanticism (post-romanticism) some appear:
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida (17 February 1836 – 22 December 1870), better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (), was a Spanish Spanish Romance literature, Romantic poet and writer (mostly short stories), also a playwright, columni ...
and Rosalía de Castro. Some anti-romantic poets are Ramón de Campoamor and Gaspar Núñez de Arce. In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature Romanticism stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature. It elevated folk art, nature and custom. The characteristics of the works of Romanticism are: * Rejection of Neoclassicism. Contrary to the scrupulous severity and order with which the rules were observed in the 18th century, the romanticist writers combine the genres and verses of different measures, at times mixing verse and prose; in theater, the rule of the three units (place, space and time) is despised and they alternate comedy with drama. * Subjectivism. Whatever kind of work it is, the exalted soul of the author pours into it all his feelings of dissatisfaction against a world that limits and breaks the flight of his desire about love, society, patriotism, etc. They do so in such a way that nature fuses with their state of spirit and it is melancholic, tetric, mysterious, dark... as opposed to the neoclassicals, who barely showed interest in the landscape. The longings for passionate love, desire for happiness, and possession of the infinite, cause a discomfort in the romanticist, an immense deception that from time to time carries them to suicide, as is the case of Mariano José de Larra. * Attraction to the nocturnal and mysterious. The romantics situate their aching and disillusioned feelings in mysterious or melancholic places, such as ruins, forests, cemeteries... Similarly they feel an attraction toward the supernatural, things that escape any logic, such as miracles, apparitions, visions of the afterlife, the diabolic and the witchlike... * Escape from the world that surrounds them. Rejection of the bourgeois society in which they are forced to live makes the romanticist be evaded from his circumstances, imagining passed epochs in which their ideals prevailed over the others, or being inspired in the exotic. In contrast with the neoclassicals, who admired the Greco-Latin antiquity, the romanticists prefer the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Among their more frequent kinds of works, they cultivate the novel, legend and historic drama. Various are the themes of the romanticist works: * Oneself. In Espronceda's ''Song to Teresa,'' a heartwrenching confession of love and disillusion, he has managed to poeticize his feelings with great success. * Passionate love, with sudden, total deliveries and quick abandonments. Exaltation and distaste. * They are inspired in legendary and historic themes. * Religion, although it is often in defiance of the consequent compassion and even exaltation of the devil. * Social demands (revaluation of marginalized types, such as the beggar). * Nature, shown in all its modalities and variations. Usually set in mysterious places, such as cemeteries, storms, the rough sea, etc. * Satire, connected with political or literary events. Image:Portrait of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, by his brother Valeriano (1862).jpg,
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida (17 February 1836 – 22 December 1870), better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (), was a Spanish Spanish Romance literature, Romantic poet and writer (mostly short stories), also a playwright, columni ...
Image:José de Espronceda (detalle).jpg, '' El escritor José de Espronceda'',
portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...
by
Antonio María Esquivel Antonio María Esquivel y Suárez de Urbina (8 March 1806 – 9 April 1857) was a Spanish painter in the Romanticism, Romantic style who specialized in portraits.''Arte Español'': Journal of the "Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte''Estudio y ...
() (
Museo del Prado The Museo del Prado ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It houses collections of Art of Europe, European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th ce ...
,
Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
) Image:Rosalía Castro de Murguía por Luis Sellier.jpg, Rosalía de Castro Image:Jose zorrilla.jpg, José Zorrilla


Realism

In Realism (end of the 19th century), which is mixed with Naturalism, important topics are the novel, with Juan Valera, José María de Pereda,
Benito Pérez Galdós Benito María de los Dolores Pérez Galdós (; 10 May 1843 – 4 January 1920) was a Spanish Spanish Realist literature, realist novelist. He was a leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Mi ...
,
Emilia Pardo Bazán Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa, Countess of Pardo Bazán (; 16 September 185112 May 1921) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor and professor. Her naturalism (literature), naturalis ...
, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), Armando Palacio Valdés, and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez; poetry, with Ramón de Campoamor, Gaspar Núñez de Arce, and other poets; the theater, with
José Echegaray José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (19 April 183214 September 1916) was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, wikt:statesman, statesman, and one of the leading Spaniards, Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. He was awarded t ...
, Manuel Tamayo y Baus, and other dramatists; and the literary critics, emphasizing Menéndez Pelayo. Realism offered depictions of contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "Realism," Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation. The realistic works of this period are characterized by: * Objective vision of reality through the direct observation of customs or psychological characters. They eliminate any subjective aspect, fantastic events, and every feeling that moves away from reality: "The novel is the image of life" (Galdós), "an artistic copy of reality" (Clarín). * Defense of a thesis: the narrators write their works approaching reality from their moral conception. They are the so-called omniscient narrators. The defense of a thesis usually compromises the objectivity of the novel. * Themes that are familiar to the reader: marital conflicts, infidelity, defense of ideals, etc. * The popular and colloquial language acquires great importance since it situates the characters in their real environment.


Modernist literature

In Modernism several currents appear: Parnassianism, Symbolism,
Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...
, and
Creationism Creationism is the faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...
. Literary Modernism in Spain was influenced by the " disaster of '98", Regenerationism, and the Free Institution of Education (founded by '' Giner de los Ríos''). Modernism was rooted in the idea that "traditional" forms of art, literature, religious faith, social organization, and daily life had become outdated; therefore it was essential to sweep them aside. The intellectual movement that thinks objectively and scientifically about the causes of the decadence of Spain as a nation between the 19th and the 20th century is called Regenerationism. It expresses a pessimist judgement about Spain. The regenerationist intellectuals divulgated their studies in journals with a big diffusion, so the movement expanded. Some important Modernist authors are Salvador Rueda, Juan Ramón Jiménez,
Miguel de Unamuno Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (; ; 29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca. His major philosophical ...
and
Rubén Darío Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (18 January 1867 – 6 February 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as '' modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...
.


20th century literature


The Generation of 1898

The destruction of Spain's fleet in Cuba by U.S. gunboats in 1898 provoked a general cultural crisis in Spain. The "Disaster" of 1898 led established writers to seek practical political, economic, and social solutions in essays grouped under the literary heading of "Regeneracionismo". For a group of younger writers, among them
Miguel de Unamuno Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (; ; 29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca. His major philosophical ...
,
Pío Baroja Pío Baroja y Nessi (28 December 1872 – 30 October 1956) was a Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98. He was a member of an illustrious family. His brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his ne ...
, and
José Martínez Ruiz José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz, better known by his pseudonym Azorín (; 8 June 1873 – 2 March 1967), was a Spanish novelist, essayist and literary critic. Biography José Martínez Ruiz was born in the village of Monòver, Spain i ...
(Azorín), the Disaster and its cultural repercussions inspired a deeper, more radical literary shift that affected both form and content. These writers, along with Ramón del Valle-Inclán,
Antonio Machado Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation ...
, Ramiro de Maeztu, and Ángel Ganivet, came to be known as the " Generation of 98". The label from its outset was controversial and even Azorín, the source of its origin, came to reject it. Nevertheless, it stuck as a way to describe a group of writers who turned in content from the more general exploration of universal middle class values characteristic of Nineteenth Century Realism to an obsession with questions of a more national nature. Their articles, essays, poems, and novels exploring Spanish history and geography carried existential overtones, expressing overall a sense of deep malaise at the social injustice, political bungling, and cultural indifference evident in contemporary Spanish society. Within a matter of years, these young authors had transformed their nation’s literary landscape. To be sure, established nineteenth century realists, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, continued to write novels and theater into the second decade of the twentieth century, and, again in the case of Galdós, were much admired by the new generation of writers. Nevertheless, with the novels of Unamuno, Azorín, Pío Baroja, and Valle Inclán, the theater of the latter, and the poetry of Antonio Machado and Unamuno, a definitive literary shift had taken place—a shift in both form and content—pointing towards the more celebrated experimental writings of Spain's vanguard writers of the 1920s. Thanks to Azorín's designation of his fellow writers as a “generation", contemporary critics and later literary historians were to catalogue and then interpret the arrival of new batches of authors in such generational terms for nearly the next one hundred years. Certainly, the terminology possesses a certain organizational elegance and indeed, recognizes the significant impact of major political and cultural events on changing literary expressions and tastes (for example, the 1898 connection, or a 1927 literary celebration that briefly united nearly every major vanguard poet in Spain).


The Generation of 1914 or Novecentismo

The next supposed “generation" of Spanish writers following those of ´98 already calls into question the value of such terminology. By the year 1914—the year of the outbreak of the First World War and of the publication of the first major work of the generation's leading voice,
José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...
—a number of slightly younger writers had established their own place within the Spanish cultural field. Leading voices include the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, the academics and essayists
Ramón Menéndez Pidal Ramón Menéndez Pidal (; 13 March 1869 – 14 November 1968) was a Spanish philologist and historian."Ramon Menendez Pidal", ''Almanac of Famous People'' (2011) ''Biography in Context'', Gale, Detroit He worked extensively on the history of t ...
,
Gregorio Marañón Gregorio Marañón y Posadillo, OWL (; 19 May 1887 – 27 March 1960) was a Spanish physician, scientist, historian, writer and philosopher. He married Dolores Moya in 1911, and they had four children (Carmen, Belén, María Isabel and Gregor ...
,
Manuel Azaña Manuel Azaña Díaz (; 10 January 1880 – 3 November 1940) was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1933 and 1936), organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the la ...
, Eugenio d'Ors, and Ortega y Gasset, and the novelists Gabriel Miró, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, and
Ramón Gómez de la Serna Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel. Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...
. While still driven by the national and existential questions that obsessed the writers of ´98, they approached these topics with a greater sense of distance and objectivity. These writers had enjoyed more formal academic training than their predecessors, many taught within the walls of academia, and one, Azaña, was to become President and face of the Second Republic. Their genre of choice were the essay and the article, their arguments more systematic, and their tastes, more European. In contrast to Unamuno's existential obsessions or Machado's conceptual, earth-bound verse, Juan Ramón's poetry pursued a more esoteric version of beauty and truth above all, while still manifesting an internalized sense of the existential dilemmas that plagued intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. Juan Ramón was Spain's great modernist poet and the maestro of the coming vanguardist Generation of 1927. In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. José Ortega y Gasset became the spokesman for this and essential every generation of writers in the first half of the twentieth century. In essays like “Meditations on the Quijote," “The Rebellion of the Masses," and most famously, “The Dehumanization of Art," Ortega laid out theories of art and society that lucidly explained and celebrated twentieth century vanguard experimentation while holding fast to an elitist social vision whose eclipse this art ironically expressed. The most elusive voice of this generation, and arguably, unclassifiable within this group was the novelist Ramón Gómez de la Serna who carried the narrative experiments of Unamuno and Valle Inclán to absurd extremes, such as in his 1923 novel, ''El novelista'', where varieties of plays with narrative subjectivity result in chapters envisioned through the eyes and voice of street lamps. More approachable and enduring are Gómez de la Serna's “Greguerías," an original form of aphorism that he described as “humor plus metaphor."


The Generation of 1927

Around 1920 a younger group of writers—mostly poets—began publishing works that from their beginnings revealed the extent to which younger artists were absorbing the literary experimentation of the writers of 1898 and 1914. Poets Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén,
Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
, Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Manuel Altolaguirre were likewise the most closely tied to formal academia yet. Novelists such as Benjamín Jarnés, Rosa Chacel, Francisco Ayala, and Ramón J. Sender were equally experimental and academic. Many of this generation were full-time university professors, while others spent periods as guest teachers and students. All were scholars of their national literary heritage, again evidence of the impact of the calls of “Regeneracionistas" and the Generation of 1898 for Spanish intelligence to turn at least partially inwards. This group of poets continues to be, without contest, the most celebrated and studied of Spain's twentieth century writers. Their work provides a capstone to what some have called the “Silver Age" of Spanish Letters, a period that began with the veritable explosion of novel production following the bloodless coup of 1868 and that would come to a tragic end with the outbreak of civil war in July 1936. The writing of this supposed generation can be roughly divided into three moments. In their early years their work arises still out of mostly local and national traditions, culminating in their united celebration of the tri-centennial of the death of Golden Age poet
Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic prebendary for the Church of Córdoba. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widel ...
. From mid decade until the arrival of Spain's Second Republic in 1931, the Generation's poets reached the apex of their experimental writings, manifesting a clear awareness of the international vanguard “—isms" sweeping major Western capitals of the day. After 1931, the Generation's writing increasingly displays the imprint of the political and social stresses that would lead to Spain's bloody civil war.


The Spanish Civil War

The
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
, lasting from July 1936 to April 1939, had a devastating impact on the trajectory of Spanish letters. In July 1936, Spain was at the height of its Silver Age. Every major writer of the three major generations—1898, 1914, and 1927—was still alive and productive. Those of 1914 and 1927 were at the height or just reaching the height of their literary powers. Several were recognized among Western civilization's most talented and influential writers. But by April 1939, Miguel de Unamuno, Antonio Machado, and Federico García Lorca, among others, were dead. All but a small handful of the remaining writers had fled into exile, dispersed across the length of the American continent, most never to enjoy the close associations of conferences, tertulias, and theater premiers that had so often united them in pre-war Madrid. Among the handful of civil war poets and writers, Miguel Hernández stands out. A young disciple and associate of the Generation of 1898, Hernández, like Lorca, became a martyr to the Republican cause but this time as a post-war prisoner, fighting and writing as a soldier poet throughout the war and then languishing and dying in one of Franco's prisons in 1942. Among his important works, ''Perito en lunas'' (1933) from his pre-war surrealist days, and ''Viento del pueblo'' (1937), evidence of the work of a soldier-poet, stand out.


Witnessing the early dictatorship (1939–1955)

The earliest years of the post-war were characterized more by hunger, repression, and suffering than by any significant literature. The published works of this period were true to pseudo-fascist dictator Francisco Franco's reactionary vision of a second Spanish golden age than to the material and existential anguish facing the majority of the country's population of the time. Neo-baroque poetry and paeans to Franco's Spain satisfied the censors but has enjoyed no subsequent critical shelf-life. Ironically, the narrative production of one of Franco's censors would provide the first sign of literary revival in post-war Spain. In 1942, Camilo José Cela's novel, , used just enough experimental arrangement (temporally disjointed narrative development to problematize simple accusations of political cause-effect critique; prefaces and post-scripts that confuse authorial intentions) to avoid the censors´ cuts and to present to discerning Spanish readers an exposé of a spiritually troubled, socially impoverished, and structurally violent society. Cela was to remain for the next five decades as one of Spain's most important novelists, eventually receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1989. With the 1945 publication of the Nadal Prize-winning by Carmen Laforet and the 1947 release of Miguel Delibes's , readers of intelligent Spanish narrative at last had cause for hope. While the fresh, joyful experimentation of Spain's "Silver Age" writers had disappeared, Cela, Laforet, and Delibes at least showed a renewed commitment to a kind of writing that first, was connected to Spain's material reality, and second, would stretch itself aesthetically in its attempts to capture the experience. By the middle of the next decade, a whole new generation of novelists was latching onto the early models laid down by Cela and Laforet. Equally influenced by the films of the Italian neorealists, novelists such as Luis Romero (, 1951), Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (, 1956), Jesús Fernández Santos (, 1956), Carmen Martín Gaite (, 1957), Ignacio Aldecoa (, 1954), and
Juan Goytisolo Juan Goytisolo Gay (6 January 1931 – 4 June 2017) was a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist. He lived in Marrakesh from 1997 until his death in 2017. He was considered Spain's greatest living writer at the beginning of the 21st century, yet ...
(, 1954) produced a social-realist tradition that was as celebrated as it was short-lived. Spanish poetry experienced renewal along similar lines. Dámaso Alonso's poem, "Insomnia" (1947), captures much of the angst and sense of violence that informed the works of Cela ''et al.'' and that would infuse the Spanish poetry of the era: Poems by
José Hierro José Hierro del Real (born 3 April 1922 in Madrid, Spain – died 21 December 2002 in Madrid, Spain), sometimes colloquially called Pepe Hierro, was a Spanish poet. He belonged to the so-called Spanish Civil War, postwar generation, within the r ...
, Blas de Otero, and Gabriel Celaya were more direct, penning poems with such transparent titles as (Hierro), (Otero), or (Celaya).


Economic and cultural renewal (1955–1975)

However, by the mid-1950s, just as with the novel, a new generation which had only experienced the Spanish civil war in childhood was coming of age. While still informed by the material social and political conditions of Spanish society, the works of Ángel González, Claudio Rodríguez, José Ángel Valente, José Agustín Goytisolo, Francisco Brines, and Gloria Fuertes among others are less politically committed. Scholars differentiate these poets´ social focus as one of communication of experience versus Hierro's and Celaya's representation of experience. That is, while these younger poets were still interested in talking about Spain, they were at least equally focused on the interactive processes of communication with the reader who was contemporaneously living these experiences. Rather than passively ingest the poet's vision of contemporary society, the poets of what came to be called variously the generation of 1956 or “of the 1960s" produced poetry that engaged the reader in the interpretation if not the production of that vision. By the early 1960s, the brief social realist burst in narrative was already growing stale. Numerous novelists took a brief hiatus from writing. The general consensus as a new decade began was that the straightforward “realism" of the previous decade, while manifesting the brutal “truth" of contemporary Spanish life under Franco, ultimately failed politically in that it directly modeled the very transparent discourse used so effectively by the authoritarian regime to crush the very opposition to which these writers aspired. Shaped in part by the French "nouveau roman" of writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, the French "La Nouvelle Vague" cinema of Godard and Truffaut, and Latin American “Boom", Spanish novelists and poets, beginning perhaps with Luis Martín Santos's novel, ''Tiempo de silencio'' (1961), returned to the restless literary experimentation last seen in Spanish letters in the early 1930s. Among Spain's most celebrated “New Novels" of this period, Juan Benet's ''Volverás a Región'' (1967), Camilo José Cela's ''San Camilo, 36'' (1969), Miguel Delibes's ''Cinco horas con Mario'' (1966), Juan Goytisolo's so called “Trilogy of Treason" consisting of ''Señas de identidad'' (1966), ''Reivindicación del conde Don Julián'' (1970), and ''Juan sin tierra'' (1975), Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's '' La saga/fuga de J. B.'' (1972), Juan Marsé's ''Si te dicen que caí'' (1973), and Luis Goytisolo's tetralogy ''Antagonía'' (1973–1981) stand out. While arguably pulling Spanish narrative by the collar from the relative dark of social realism towards the aesthetic standards of Europe's most elite avant-garde, many of these novels proved almost unreadable to much of the public, a reality nicely embodied at the end of Juan Goytisolo's trilogy when an already deconstructed Spanish prose gradually transforms into an unreadable Arabic. The novel's experimentation was shadowed in Spanish poetry. José María Castellet's publication of ''Nueve novísimos poetas españoles'' recognized a group of artists whose works had similarly returned to early century experimentation. The works of Pere Gimferrer, Guillermo Carnero, and Leopoldo Panero, arguably the most important poets of the group, manifest a decidedly baroque style full of oblique cultural references, metapoetic devices, and other forms of extreme poetic self-consciousness spilling into the precious. Like the works of the New Novelists, this poetry was for a select group of readers, if not exclusive to the poets themselves.


Writing in the democracy (1975–1999)

When Franco at last died in November 1975, the important work of establishing democracy had an immediate impact on Spanish letters. Elitist narrative and poetry quickly gave way to narrative and poetry interested anew in not merely teaching (via content or style) but in delighting. Storytelling became the mantra for a new generation of Spanish novelists. Eduardo Mendoza's '' The Truth about the Savolta Case'' (1975) invited readers to escape to the roaring 1920s of Spain's pre-political, culturally vibrant Silver Age. While availing itself of various “New Novel" experiments such as narrative fragmentation, the use of mixed media, and the presence of numerous often contradictory narrative voices, Mendoza's novel could be read and enjoyed as an adventure story with romantic and dramatic appeal. Carmen Martín Gaite's 1978 novel, ''El cuarto de atrás'', was another manifestation of the happy melding of experiment with old-fashioned storytelling, pulling readers down through various narrative levels to explore dark memories of Spain's recent political past but with the light, ironic touch of a romance novel. Over the next several years a wealth of young new writers, among them
Juan José Millás Juan José Millás (born 1946) is a Spanish writer and winner of the 1990 Premio Nadal. He was born in Valencia, Spain, Valencia and has spent most of his life in Madrid, Spain, Madrid, where he studied philosophy and literature at the Universida ...
, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, Luis Mateo Díez, José María Merino, Félix de Azúa, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Enrique Vila-Matas, Carme Riera, and later Antonio Muñoz Molina and
Almudena Grandes María de la Almudena Grandes Hernández (7 May 1960 – 27 November 2021) was a Spanish writer. Author of 14 novels and three short-story collections, her work has been translated into twenty languages and frequently adapted to film. She won t ...
, would begin carving out a prominent place for themselves within the Spanish cultural field. During the 1980s, Spanish narrative began appearing regularly on best seller lists for the first time since the pre-war era and many of this new generation became literary and cultural celebrities, living off their work as writers with all its blessing and curses, including the obligation to publish or perish. By the 1990s, the pressure to produce for the large publishing houses was clearly diminishing the early literary promise of some of these writers. On the other hand, some like Javier Marías, after publishing since the early 1970s, finally achieved international fame, appearing on best-seller lists throughout Europe. Marías's novels ''Corazón tan blanco'' (1992) and ''Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí'' (1994), and his ever-expanding experiment with real fiction (begun with 1989's ''Todas las almas'' and continued through weekly newspaper columns, 1998's ''Negra espalda del tiempo'', and extended in his 21st century trilogy, ''Tu rostro mañana''), placed him on numerous critics´ Nobel Prize shortlists. The big money available through novel publishing manifested itself in the 1990s in the explosion of literary prizes, awarded in Spain, unlike the UK's Man Booker or the U.S.'s Pulitzer, to unpublished works. Literary prizes became little more than publicity opportunities. The long-standing Planeta and Nadal prizes, already media events, grew in importance and remuneration. They were joined during the decade by the Primavera, Alfaguara, and Lara Prizes, the return of the Café Gijón and the Biblioteca Breve prizes. Most carried large sums for the winners and guaranteed—often obligated—long international book tours. Into this economically-charged mix stepped two new phenomena, the literary superstar and the literary celebrity. The former is almost entirely embodied by journalist turned novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte who has managed to merit a certain critical acclaim while topping the sales charts with nearly every novel he writes. Many of his novels have been converted into popular films. A lesser figure as far as novel sales, but still important to the overall industry is the literary celebrity. These celebrities range from politically powerful figures like Antonio Muñoz Molina and Jon Juaristi to brief media flashes like Ray Loriga, José Ángel Mañas, and Lucía Etxebarría. The latter three were the most representative members of the last of the twentieth century's supposed literary “generations." The “Generación X," as critics dubbed them, brought black humor to a certain kind of post-political social realism focused principally on sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and the mental illness that accompanies it. These writers proved an excellent marketing phenomenon. That their works will endure is doubtful. New novelists whose work is more likely to endure that began publishing in this period include Rafael Chirbes, Belén Gopegui,
David Trueba David Rodríguez Trueba (born 10 September 1969) is a Spanish filmmaker and author. Biography David Rodríguez Trueba was born on 10 September 1969 in Madrid, the youngest of 8 siblings. His elder brother Fernando is also a filmmaker. In 19 ...
, the Basque writers Bernardo Atxaga and Álvaro Bermejo, and the Galician's Manuel Rivas and Suso de Toro among others. In the final decade of the 1990s, then, arguably five generations of writers—from Cela, to Sánchez Ferlosio, to Mendoza, to Muñoz Molina, to the Generation X authors—were sharing the expanding literary space of Spanish narrative. Notwithstanding the abundance of prize money that threatened to drown out quality with media-generated noise, the Spanish literary field at the end of the twentieth century was as promising as it had not been since the 1920s.


Contemporary literature

Javier Marías is widely considered as the most distinguished author in contemporary Spanish literature. Other acclaimed and widely read writers both nationally and internationally are Enrique Vila-Matas, Rosa Montero, Antonio Muñoz Molina, as well as more commercial authors like
Carlos Ruiz Zafón Carlos Ruiz Zafón (; 25 September 1964 – 19 June 2020) was a Spanish novelist known for his 2001 novel ''La sombra del viento'' ('' The Shadow of the Wind''). The novel sold 15 million copies and was winner of numerous awards; it was included ...
. In recent years authors such as Elvira Navarro and Javier Cercas have published acclaimed best-selling novels.Borja Hermoso
What they're reading in Spain
The Guardian 28 March 2011


Outline

* Middle Ages ** Epics: *** The Lay of the Cid *** Poema de Fernán González *** Mocedades de Rodrigo **
Alfonso X Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, ; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germany on 1 Ap ...
** Juan Ruiz (''Libro de buen amor'') ** Gonzalo de Berceo (''Milagros de Nuestra Señora'') ** Jorge Manrique (''Coplas a la muerte de su padre'') * Renaissance and Baroque (
Siglo de oro The Spanish Golden Age (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Siglo de Oro'', , "Golden Century"; 1492 – 1681) was a period of literature and the The arts, arts in Spain that coincided with the political rise of the Spanish Empire under the Catholic M ...
) ** The classical prose *** Anonymous (''
Lazarillo de Tormes ''The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities'' ( ) is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its anticlerical content. It was published simultaneously in three cities in 1554: Alcalá de Henares, Burgos a ...
'') *** Fernando de Rojas ('' La Celestina'') ***
Alonso de Ercilla Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (7 August 153329 November 1594) was a Spanish soldier and poet, born in Madrid. While in Chile (1556–63) he fought against the Araucanians (Mapuche), and there he began the epic poem '' La Araucana'', considered one ...
('' La Araucana'') ***
Bernal Díaz del Castillo Bernal Díaz del Castillo ( 1492 – 3 February 1584) was a Spanish conquistador who participated as a soldier in the conquest of the Aztec Empire under Hernán Cortés and late in his life wrote an account of the events. As an experienced ...
(''Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España'') ***
Bernardino de Sahagún Bernardino de Sahagún ( – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he jour ...
(''Historia General de las cosas de la Nueva España'') *** Mateo Alemán (''Guzmán de Alfarache'') ***
Baltasar Gracián Baltasar Gracián y Morales (; 8 January 16016 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte de Gracián, Belmonte, n ...
(''El Criticón'') ***
Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelist ...
(''
Don Quixote , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...
'', ''Novelas ejemplares'') ** The classical Spanish theater *** Juan del Encina *** Lope de Rueda *** Guillén de Castro (''Las Mocedades del Cid'') ***
Lope de Vega Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (; 25 November 156227 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque literature. In the literature of ...
(''El perro del hortelano'', ''Fuenteovejuna'') ***
Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (17 January 160025 May 1681) (, ; ) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished Spanish Baroque literature, poets and ...
(''La vida es sueño'') *** Tirso de Molina (''El burlador de Sevilla'') *** Juan Ruiz de Alarcón ** Spanish classical poetry *** Garcilaso de la Vega *** Juan Boscán *** Fray Luis de León ***
Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic prebendary for the Church of Córdoba. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widel ...
***
Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...
*** Saint John of the Cross *** Saint Teresa of Ávila ** Philosophy ***
Francisco de Vitoria Francisco de Vitoria ( – 12 August 1546; also known as Francisco de Victoria) was a Spanish Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian, and jurist of Renaissance Spain. He is the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Sala ...
***
Juan Luis Vives Juan Luis Vives y March (; ; ; ; 6 March 6 May 1540) was a Spaniards, Spanish (Valencian people, Valencian) scholar and Renaissance humanist who spent most of his adult life in the southern Habsburg Netherlands. His beliefs on the soul, insigh ...
***
Antonio de Nebrija Antonio de Nebrija (14445 July 1522) was the most influential Spanish humanist of his era. He wrote poetry, commented on literary works, and encouraged the study of classical languages and literature, but his most important contributions were i ...
('' Gramática Castellana'') *** Gómez Pereira ***
Bartolomé de las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican Order, OP ( ; ); 11 November 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a Spanish clergyman, writer, and activist best known for his work as an historian and social reformer. He arrived in Hispaniola as a layman, then became ...
(''Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias'') *** Francisco Suárez ***
Luis de Molina Luis de Molina (29 September 1535 – 12 October 1600) was a Spanish Jesuit Catholic priest, jurist, economist and theologian renowned for his contributions to philosophy and economics within the framework of the second scholasticism. A ...
* The 18th century ** Neoclassical prose *** José Cadalso (''Cartas marruecas'', ''Noches lúgubres'') *** Benito Jerónimo Feijoo *** José Francisco de Isla ***
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (born Gaspar Melchor de Jove y Llanos, 5 January 1744 – 27 November 1811) was a Spain, Spanish Spanish Enlightenment literature, neoclassical statesman, author, philosopher and a major figure of the Age of Enlighte ...
** Neoclassical poetry *** Tomás de Iriarte (''Fábulas literarias'') *** Juan Meléndez Valdés *** Félix María de Samaniego ** Neoclassical theater *** Vicente García de la Huerta (''Raquel'') *** Leandro Fernández de Moratín (''El sí de las niñas'') * The 19th century ** Romanticists *** Romantic Prose **** Juan Donoso Cortés **** Mariano José de Larra **** Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo *** Romantic poetry **** Manuel José Quintana ****
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida (17 February 1836 – 22 December 1870), better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (), was a Spanish Spanish Romance literature, Romantic poet and writer (mostly short stories), also a playwright, columni ...
(''Rhymes'', ''Legends'') **** José de Espronceda ('' El estudiante de Salamanca'', ''La canción del pirata'') **** Rosalía de Castro *** Romantic theater **** Adelardo López de Ayala **** Antonio García Gutiérrez (''El trovador'') ****
Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch Martínez (6 September 1806 – 2 August 1880) was a Spanish dramatist. He was the Director of the National Library of Spain until he retired in 1875. Biography Hartzenbusch was born in Madrid, Spain. His father was ...
(''Los amantes de Teruel'') **** Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (''La conjuración de Venecia'') **** Duque de Rivas (''Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino'') **** José Zorrilla (''
Don Juan Tenorio ''Don Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes'' (Don Juan Tenorio: Religious-Fantasy Drama in Two Parts) is a Play (theatre), play written by José Zorrilla and produced in 1844. It is the most romantic of the two principal Span ...
'') ** Realists ***
Benito Pérez Galdós Benito María de los Dolores Pérez Galdós (; 10 May 1843 – 4 January 1920) was a Spanish Spanish Realist literature, realist novelist. He was a leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Mi ...
('' Fortunata y Jacinta'', '' Episodios Nacionales'', ''Misericordia'') *** Leopoldo Alas, Clarín ('' La Regenta'', ''Su único hijo'') *** Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (''Arroz y tartana'', ''Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis'') ***
Emilia Pardo Bazán Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa, Countess of Pardo Bazán (; 16 September 185112 May 1921) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor and professor. Her naturalism (literature), naturalis ...
(''Los pazos de Ulloa'') ***
Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau Enrique Lucio Eugenio Gaspar y Rimbau (2 March 1842 in Madrid – 7 September 1902 in Oloron) was a Spanish diplomat and writer, who wrote many plays ('' zarzuelas''), and one of the first novels involving time travel with a time machine, ' ...
(''El anacronópete'') ***
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza (10 March 183319 July 1891) was a nineteenth-century Spanish novelist, known best for his novel '' El sombrero de tres picos'' (1874), an adaptation of popular traditions which provides a description of villag ...
('' El sombrero de tres picos'') *** Armando Palacio Valdés (''La hermana San Sulpicio'') *** José María de Pereda (''Sotileza'') *** Juan Valera (''Pepita Jiménez'', ''Juanita la Larga'') *** Concepción Arenal * The 20th century ** Generation of 98 *** Prose **** Ángel Ganivet ****
Pío Baroja Pío Baroja y Nessi (28 December 1872 – 30 October 1956) was a Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98. He was a member of an illustrious family. His brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his ne ...
('' The Tree of Knowledge'') ****
Miguel de Unamuno Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (; ; 29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca. His major philosophical ...
(''
Mist Mist is a phenomenon caused by small droplets of water suspended in the cold air, usually by condensation. Physically, it is an example of a Dispersion (chemistry), dispersion. It is most commonly seen where water vapor in warm, moist air meets ...
'') **** José Martínez Ruiz, Azorín *** Poetry ****
Antonio Machado Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation ...
(''Soledades'', ''Campos de Castilla'') **** Manuel Machado **** Mario Satz *** Theater **** Jacinto Benavente (''Los intereses creados'') **** Ramón del Valle-Inclán ('' Luces de bohemia'', ''Martes de Carnaval'') ** Generation of 27 *** Rafael Alberti (''Marinero en tierra'') *** Vicente Aleixandre *** Dámaso Alonso (''Hijos de la ira'') *** Manuel Altolaguirre *** Luis Cernuda ***
Gerardo Diego Gerardo Diego Cendoya (October 3, 1896 – July 8, 1987) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. Diego taught language and literature at institutes of learning in Soria, Gijón, Santander and Madrid. He also acted as lite ...
*** García Lorca (''Yerma'', ''La casa de Bernarda Alba'') *** Jorge Guillén *** Leopoldo Panero *** Emilio Prados *** Pedro Salinas (''La voz a ti debida'') *** Miguel Hernández ('' The farmer of more air'', ''El rayo que no cesa'') ** Philosophy ***
George Santayana George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the Un ...
*** María Zambrano ***
José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...
(''Meditaciones sobre el Quijote'') *** Alexandre Deulofeu *** Julián Marias ***
Fernando Savater Fernando Fernández-Savater Martín (born 21 June 1947 at Basque city of San Sebastián) is a Spanish philosopher, essayist and author. Early years and career Born in San Sebastián, he was an Ethics professor at the University of the Basqu ...
***
Xavier Zubiri Xavier Zubiri (; ; 4 December 1898 – 21 September 1983) was a Spanish philosopher. Zubiri was a member of the Madrid School, composed of philosophers José Ortega y Gasset (the founder of the group), José Gaos, and Julián Marías, among ...
*** Eugenio d'Ors ** Prose *** Camilo José Cela (''La colmena'', ''La familia de Pascual Duarte'') *** Fernando Fernán Gómez (''El viaje a ninguna parte'') *** Miguel Delibes (''Cinco horas con Mario'', ''Los santos inocentes'') *** Gonzalo Torrente Ballester ('' Los gozos y las sombras'') *** Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (''Yo maté a Kennedy'') *** Max Aub ***
Salvador de Madariaga Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (23 July 1886 – 14 December 1978) was a Spanish "eminent liberal", diplomat, writer, historian and pacifist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize and awarded the Charl ...
** Poetry ***
Ramón Gómez de la Serna Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel. Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...
(''Greguerías'') *** Jorge Semprún *** José Luis Cano *** José María Pemán ** Theater ***
Santiago Rusiñol Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (, ; Barcelona 25 February 1861 – Aranjuez 13 June 1931) was a Spanish painter, poet, journalist, collector and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan '' modernisme'' movement. He created more than ...
*** Alejandro Casona (''La dama del alba'') *** Antonio Buero Vallejo (''Historia de una escalera'') ***
Manuel Azaña Manuel Azaña Díaz (; 10 January 1880 – 3 November 1940) was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1933 and 1936), organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the la ...
*** Fernando Arrabal *** Paloma Pedrero


See also

*
Latin American literature Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of Latin America. Latin American literature rose to particular pro ...
* Philippine literature in Spanish * List of Spanish-language authors *
List of Spanish-language poets This is a list of notable poets who have written in the Spanish language. Argentina * Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) * Nemer ibn el Barud (1925–2010) * Jacobo Fijman (1898–1970) * Juan Gelman (1930–2014) * Oliverio Girondo (1891–1967) ...
* Catalan literature * Galician-language literature * List of Asturian language authors * The Premio Cervantes prize is awarded to honour the career of a writer in the Spanish language, regardless of nationality. * José María Gironella *
Arabic literature Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is ''Adab (Islam), Adab'', which comes from a meaning of etiquett ...
, for literature produced in Islamic Spain * Basque literature


References

* * * Gies, David T. (Ed.). ''The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature.'' Cambridge University Press, 2008. .


External links


La biblioteca virtual "Miguel de Cervantes"
Online Spanish literature texts.
Palabra virtual
Latin American Poetry. {{Authority control