Spanish Literature
Spanish Literature
- Spanish authors
- Literature Before Castilian Spanish
- Early Castilian Spanish Literature
- Renaissance Literature
- Enlightenment Literature
- Romanticist Literature
- Realist Literature
- The Generation of 1898
- Early 20th Century Literature
- Post Civil War Literature
19th Century Spanish Literature - Realism
The costumbrismo, a genre exposed by the romantic authors, eventually led to the genres that emerged soon afterwards, namely realism and naturalism.
Realism surfaced to contrast the Romantic movement of the first half of the 19th Century. Literary preferences changed with the bourgeois revolutions of 1848, which triggered great alterations in social and economic structures. This was reflected in literary Works, where history and myth began to lose ground to novels that aimed at faithfully portraying the reality of the surrounding situation. Notable writers include Juan Valera with "Pepita Jiménez", José María de Pereda with "Peñas arriba", Leopoldo Alas "Clarín", with the novel "La Regenta" and Benito Pérez Galdós with "Episodios Nacionales".
Naturalism reflected the ideas of the Realist movement blended in with new philosophical tendencies, such as the determinist movement, which considered people to be tied to their destiny, powerless to change their fate. In Spain, some of the most important representatives of this movement include Emila Pardo Bazán with "Los Pazos de Ulloa" and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez with "La Barraca" and "Cañas y Barro". These are novels portraying the rural situation of the 19th Century.