Spanish Literature - 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 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.