Spanish Realist Literature - Poetry

Poetry

While it is true that towards the second half of the 19th century the novel evolved quickly towards Realism, this did not happen to poetry and to drama, whose transformation was less violent and still continued to be infused with Romanticism until the end of the century.

This late Romanticism is more apparent than real; sometimes it lacks depth and the lyric exaltation to which the true romantic abandoned himself. This is due to the social reality of the moment: the time in which the bourgeoisie would consolidate the Restoration of 1875. This society, which was laying the foundations of Capitalism and was taking the first steps of industrialization in the country, did not leave room for the people who admired art for art's sake.

The most representative writers are Gaspar Núñez de Arce and Ramón de Campoamor, sometimes considered as opponents of Romanticism, because Romanticism was still in its final throes as is evidenced in the classic works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro.

Read more about this topic:  Spanish Realist Literature

Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    Before now poetry has taken notice
    Of wars, and what are wars but politics
    Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)