Thursday, January 31, 2008

Time period/Literary genre breakdown

This is a summary what Drs. Pratt and Hegstrom shared with us regarding the literary styles and their approximate time frames:

Medieval (11th-15th C.)
Key points:
  • This life is a "veil of tears"
  • Focus on how to be a good person
  • Major focus on body (Otis Green - sic and non (yes and no))
    - Cast mind up to God with an earthy context (the Medieval period freely discussed the body)
  • Very didactic (those who do good receive a good reward, those who do bad receive a bad punishment) - designed to encourage people to perform good acts
    - Example: El conde Lucanor (every cuento ends with a short couplet-moraleja)
    + Another late yet applicable transitional example (moving into Renacimiento): El Cortesano - Castiglione (series of rules on how to be a cortesano and practice amor cortesano)
  • Major forms of text: Romances (Coplas por la muerte de su padre), canciones (El cantar del mío Cid)
Major texts from the Medieval Period:
Renacimiento (1492-1580)
Key points:
  • Opening up of world to the alien/other/otherness
    - Began questioning "who am I?" (Example: Lazarillo de Tormes, Santa Teresa's Libro de la vida)
    + Any time the narrator states "this is the way things are" is indicative of a renacentista text.
  • The individual becomes very important
    - The biografía makes an appearance (see above examples)
  • Life is challenged by society
  • Lyrical "yo" is internalized
    - Example: La poesía de Garcilaso de la Vega
  • Love is very pronounced
    - Novela pastoril     (Example: Montemayor's La Diana)
    - This idea stems from Petrarch in Italy
    + Sonnets, églogas, etc.
  • Humanism - Fray Luis de León
    - Shift to focus on rationality
  • Not certain how to deal with reformation (1517-1648) and the counter-reformation (1560-1648)
  • Concerned with beauty of humanity
  • Large nations - questions of Empire come into play
  • Threat of the Turks - leads to religious strife
Key texts:
Siglo de oro (16th-17th C. {encompasses both renacimiento and baroque periods})
Key points:
  • Prolific production of plays
    - Although the Golden Age embarks both periods (Renacimiento and baroque), it is worth highlighting mainly because of it's huge literary contributions
  • The Quijote is published (1605 - pt.1, 1615 - pt.2) by Miguel de Cervantes (or is it Cide Hamete Benengeli?)
    - This text is more of a mix of the two genres (renacentista y barroco)
    + Renacentista conventions:
    - Careful explanation of everything (In this sense, definitely not a fantastic text)
    - Sense of closure
    + Baroque conventions:
    - Metafiction
    - Layering
  • Culteranismo/Gongorismo (~1580) - Luis de Góngora
    + A baroque convention that focuses on the beauty of the language and meaning, at the expense of comprehension
  • Conceptismo (~1580) - Francisco de Quevedo
    + Another baroque style whose major concentration is on word-play and semantics (Quevedo and Góngora frequently verbally abused each other in their poetry)
  • Golden Age theater contains more barroco elements than renacentista
Key writers:
Barroco (1681 (la muerte de Calderón)-18th C.)
Key points:
  • Appearance vs. Reality
    - Theme of desengaño
    +     Which can mean two things:
    1. disillusionment
    2. Awareness of the truth of things (Example: La dama duende, Quevedo's "Ah de la vida...nadie me responde...")
  • In art, it is an excessively decorative style, as seen particularly in the architecture of the period (The Catholic Church was rather fond of el barroco)
Neoclasicismo (18th C., mainly after 1714, when Felipe V was brought to power, thus bringing in foreign artists and influences)
Key points:
  • New process of redefining Spaniard; an attempt to emphasize their Spanish-ness before the court
    + This is in reaction to the excessive gaudiness of rococo (in painting)
    + Clearly an attempt to go back to a time when "things were better"
  • Through out the baroque period, Spain was losing it's hegemony (hence, it makes perfect sense to look to the past, when Spain was a global power)
  • This movement goes hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment (Ilustración), which was a period of high rationality. It was felt that rational thought could solve all world problems (The US government is extremely neoclassical, look at the White house!)
  • In theater, the three unities became protocol:
    1) Play occurred in less than 24 hours
    2) Action occurred all in one place
    3) Play contained only one plot
  • The essay and fábula became popular writing styles (Example: Samaniego's Fábulas literarias)
Key writers:
French revolution! (1789-1799)
  • Battle between Britain and France in the Iberian Peninsula (most of Napoleonic War takes place in Spain)
  • Spain slowly arrives into Romanticismo
Romanticismo (1833 (la muerte de Fernando VII)-1840's (the last Romantic text is 1849))
Key points:
  • Individual experience is preeminent way of knowing the universe
    + "Yo" takes on a TITANIC figure ("I" vs. the universe) (Example: Duque de Riva's Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino)
    + Challenges everything
  • Enormous shift from Neoclassicism
    + Hundreds of actors
    + Use of technology (flames (final scene of Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio, explosions!)
    + Rode horses on the stage
    + Extremely dramatic and emotional
    + Diverse periods of time (years, even decades can pass during a single play - again, see Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino)
    + Action takes place all over the map
    + Multiple plot lines (sending all three of the unities to the proverbial Mexican "goma")
  • Bécquer is a little tardío in his Romanticismo; Rimas y leyendas is published over 1858-1864
    + Bécquer is a "shifty figure" as his style makes him more modernistic (he is very careful and precise with his meaning (something like Culteranismo) when he writes) - Maybe pre-modernist would be a better identification
Key writers:
Realismo (1868 (coinciding with the Liberal revolution)-~1898 (?))
  • Reflection of what is really going on in the world
  • Focus on the Middle class (Example: Pérez Galdós Torquemada en la hoguera - 1889)
  • Subgéneros:
    + Naturalismo - emphasizes the gross and disgusting as well as the sublime and beautiful (Example: Pardo Bazán's "Un destripador de antaño")
    + Costumbrismo - focuses on giving "little pictures" (a painting with words) of the customs of the people; moves throughout Realism
Key writers:
Modernismo (1888 (publicación de Darío's Azul...)-
Key points:
  • Rechazo de la realidad cotidiana
  • Use of mythology and sensuality
  • Search for formal perfection
  • Greatly use nature as a source of inspiration
    + Search for natural beauty
  • Return to hyper-preoccupation of e v e r y s i n g l e w o r d
Key writers:
  • Juan Ramón Jiménez Diario de un poeta recién casado (Diario de poeta y mar) (1948)
  • Antonio Machado Soledades (1903)
  • Ramón del Valle-Inclán Sonata de otoño (1902)
Generación del '98 (1898)
  • Obsessed with problem of Spain - no longer an Empire
    + What does it mean to be a Spaniard?
  • Miguel de Unamuno
    + Unorthodox Christianity - desperately wants to believe in God, but can't
    + Always self-conscious; his writings are frequently removing layer after layer of narration, seeking for a deeper/true meaning
Key writers:
  • Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo Niebla (1914) - characterized as a nivola, "San Manuel Bueno, Martír" (1930)
Late 1950's - period of Social realism

Vanguardismo ("Modernism" in English) (Early 20th C.-1936 (?) (guerra civil y la subsiguiente isolación de España))
  • Reaction to and rejection of Modernismo (in Spanish)
  • Various "-ismos"
    + Dadaismo (Duchamp (NY Dadaismo))
    + Surrealismo (Dalí, Buñuel...)
    + Tremendismo (Cela)
    + Expresionismo
    - Cubismo (Picasso)
    + Creacionismo (Huidobro, Vallejo, Borges, (early) Neruda, poets during the first half of 20th C.)
  • Wanted to establish truth or at least unify truth
    + Claims to be more "real" than realismo
Key writers:
I would like to thank Wikipedia, dictionary.com, and cervantesvirtual for being so link-able.

posted by Jared Blanco | 8:20 AM

1 Comments:

Blogger rantipoler said...

This is a great & very helpful post. Perhaps someday I will contribute something worthwhile on here.

March 2, 2009 at 10:14 PM  

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