Romanticism in Spanish Literature - Characteristics of Romanticism

Characteristics of Romanticism

• Rejection of Neoclassicism. Faced with the scrupulous rigor and order with which rules were observed in the 18th century, the romantic writers combined the genres and verses of distinct media, at times mixing verse and prose; in the theater the rule of three unities (action, place, and time) was despised, and they alternated the comic with the dramatic.

• Subjectivism. Whatever the type of work, the passionate soul of the author poured into it all of its feelings of dissatisfaction with a world that limited and frustrated the expression of its longings and worries, in relation to love, society, and country alike. They identified nature with spirit, and expressed it as melancholy, gloom, mystery, and darkness, by contrast with the neo-Classicists, who barely showed interest in the natural world. Cravings for passionate love, the desire for happiness and the possession of the infinite, caused in the Romantics a disheartenment, an immense disappointment that sometimes brought them to suicide, as in the case of Mariano José de Larra.
• Attraction of the nocturnal and mysterious. The Romantics situated their sorrowful and disappointed feelings in mysterious or melancholic places, such as ruins, forests, and cemeteries. In the same manner they felt attracted toward the supernatural, that which escapes logic, such as miracles, apparitions, visions from beyond the grave, the diabolical, and witchcraft.
• Flight from the world. Their disgust toward the bourgeois society that they were forced to live in caused the Romantics to try to turn their back on their circumstances, imagining past eras in which their ideals prevailed, or taking inspiration from the exotic. By contrast with the neo-Classicists, who admired Greco-Roman antiquity, the Romantics preferred the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Their favorite modes of expression were the novel, legends, and historical drama.