Spanish Enlightenment Literature - The Spanish Language in The 18th Century

The Spanish Language in The 18th Century

In this century, a fight in favor of the clarity and naturalness of the artistic language is fought, in which many writers fought against the rests of the Baroque style that still survived, that is to say, the use of artifices at which the late Baroque had arrived.

The Latin was used in the universities as academic language, but little by little it was being replaced in that role. They wanted to return to the splendor of the Golden Age as literary language, but for that it was necessary to develop forms of expression in agreement with the European experimental sciences, work which was developed by Feijoo, Sarmiento, Mayans, Jovellanos, Forner, Capmany, among others. In 1813, after the War of Independence, the Meeting created by the Regency to make a general reform of education ordered the exclusive use of the Spanish in the university.

Many of the illustrated people, for the modernization of Spain, defended the implantation of the education in other languages (French, English, Italian) in the centers, and the translation of outstanding works to the Castilian. To the first were opposed those who defended the priority of the classic languages (Latin and Greek) as opposed to the modern ones, and to the second were opposed those who rejected the translations because they would introduce unnecessary foreign words in the Spanish language and would endanger its identity. Two positions arose thus: the casticismo, that defended a pure language, without neither mixture of voices nor strange turns, with words documented by the authorities (the Royal Spanish Academy); and the purismo, that was totally against the penetration of neologisms, mainly the foreign ones, blaming its opponents for being stainers of the language.