Prose
The narrative is almost nonexistent in Spain during this period. Practically it is reduced to the Life of Diego de Torres Villarroel, or to the story Fray Gerundio de Campazas of Padre Isla.
Another modality of great influence in this time was the newspaper. Literary, scientific, or of curiosities, publications like the Newspaper of the Literate of Spain, The Censor or The Mail of Madrid contributed to spread the theories and the ideas of the moment in Spain, laying the principles of the Enlightenment.
On the contrary, the essay is the dominant genre. This educative and doctrinal prose shows a desire to approach the problems of the moment, tends to the reform of the customary and usually makes use of the epistolar form.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Enlightenment Literature
Famous quotes containing the word prose:
“Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement ... says heaven and earth in one word ... speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.”
—Christopher Fry (b. 1907)
“Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)