Spanish Literature of the Enlightenment
Throughout the XVIII century a new mentality emerged that linked to Renaissance anthropology and that consequently comes to destroy the worldview of the Baroque world. This period has received the name of «Enlightenment». Said movement is commented, in broad strokes, in the critical spirit, which abruptly breaks with the principle of authority, in the predominance of reason and its foundation in experience. This structure of knowledge has the consequence that philosophy and science are the most valued disciplines. This period has been known in the History of Ideas as the "Age of Enlightenment" or "Century of Reason". Its most relevant characteristic is the search for human happiness through culture and progress. The new ideas associated with Enlightenment thought led art and literature to move towards a new classicism (Neoclassicism), from which the adjective "neoclassical" is derived. In literature, the moderate expression of emotions is sought, and to emulate classical norms and rules (updated thanks to the archaeological discoveries of this period). At the same time, balance and harmony were valued as the dominant aesthetic principle. Traditionally, there has been a tendency to affirm that a reaction was made against such rigidity at the end of the century, resulting in a return to the world of feelings that is given the name of "Pre-romanticism". For some authors such as Marta Manrique Gómez, along the lines of the literary historian Russell P. Sebold, romanticism is not constituted as a reaction against obsolete forms, but rather as the development of a mode of expression previously imbricated in the authors that we canonically recognize as enlightened. Yeah
Historical framework
The 18th century begins with the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The European powers, concerned about the hegemonic power of the French King Louis XIV, together with the fact that his grandson Felipe de Anjou had been named heir to the throne of Spain by Carlos II, formed the Grand Alliance and supported the attempt of Archduke Carlos of Austria to access to the crown. After the Treaty of Utrecht, Felipe V was recognized as King of Spain (1700-1746), although this entailed the loss of his European domains, Menorca and Gibraltar. In 1724, he abdicated in favor of his son Luis I, but dying this month later, he reassumed the Spanish throne. During his monarchy, he developed a centralist policy and reorganized the Public Treasury.
After the death of Felipe V, he was succeeded by Fernando VI (1746-1759), who, with the ministers Carvajal and the Marquis de la Ensenada, improved communications and roads in the country, encouraged shipbuilding and favored development of the sciences
After the monarchy of Fernando VI, his half-brother Carlos III succeeded to the throne. Prototype of an illustrated monarch, he was attended by important ministers, such as Floridablanca, Campomanes, Aranda, Grimaldi and the Marquis of Esquilache. Without departing from the model of the Old Regime, he modernized the country, repopulated Sierra Morena, favored education, commerce and public works.
During the reign of Charles IV, the French Revolution (1789) broke out. This abdicated in favor of his son Fernando VII, after the invasion by the French in 1808.
The Enlightenment in Europe
Towards the last decades of the XVII century, the system of the Old Regime, based on the predominance of of the two ecclesiastical and noble estates subject to an absolute monarchy. In this century, Europe critically reviewed the established order. It proposes, in contrast to previous thought, reason as a universal method of knowledge, systematic criticism and promotes the experimental method and studies based on one's own reasoning as the basis of the epistemology that sustains it against the argument of authority that has sustained thought for centuries. previous.
Knowledge moved from court meetings to bourgeois salons, cafés or cultural institutions. The need was felt to travel for reasons of study or pleasure, to learn other languages, to practice sports to strengthen the body or to improve the living conditions of citizens. There was also a great weariness of the Baroque ornamental exuberance and its conceptual difficulty; greater clarity and balance were desired; For this reason, in Rome, against the cultic excesses of Marinism, under the impetus given by the critics Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni and Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, the Academy of Arcadia or Arcades was born in 1690, which, through its branches or coloniae spread throughout Italy the ideal of good taste or buon senso and a return to classical literature.
In this new attitude, the enlightened person is a philanthropist who cares about others, proposing and undertaking reforms in aspects related to culture and society. They defend religious tolerance, skepticism is practiced and religions are even attacked. In opposition to absolute monarchies, Montesquieu defended the foundations of modern constitutionalism with the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers. The enlightened wanted to enjoy freedom and choose their own rulers. All this inspired the motto of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
The Enlightenment theories originated in England, although they reached their culmination in France, where they were collected in the Encyclopédie (Encyclopedia or Reasoned Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts, 1751-1772), edited by Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot. In this work, all the existing knowledge of the time was collected, in alphabetical order. This work is born from the intention of making accessible to all citizens the totality of knowledge of the time.
The Lights in Spain
Antecedents of reformism: the novatores of the 17th century
Due to the existence of the Inquisition, scientific development during the time of the Habsburgs was diminished by the effective possibility of censorship. The delay, consequently, with respect to Europe is already manifested as evident at the beginning of the XVIII century. Even so, some intellectuals did not abandon research developing their studies in subjects such as astronomy, mathematics or botany. They also spread the scientific theories of Galileo Galilei, Kepler, Linnaeus or Isaac Newton. Among the novices, the following stand out: Juan de Cabriada, Antonio Hugo de Omerique, Juan Caramuel, Martín Martínez, Tomás Vicente Tosca, Juan Bautista Corachán, as well as the Jesuit Mateo Aymerich, professor at the universities of Cervera and Gandía and who would be one of the teachers by Juan Andres. In the 18th century, the legacy they left behind was continued by other scientists such as Jorge Juan, Cosme Bueno, Antonio de Ulloa, etc
Penetration of lights in Spain
After the Spanish Succession War, the Bourbons found a Spain mired in ignorance. The Iberian Peninsula had barely seven and a half million inhabitants. With a French political conception, Felipe V strengthened the monarchical power and fostered a process of centralization of the nation, abolishing the privileges and laws belonging to the territories of the Crown of Aragon. The Church maintained its dominance, despite the expulsion in 1767 of religious orders such as the Society of Jesus. On the other hand, the common people, made up of ranchers, farmers, civil servants and the marginalized, had few rights. The monarchs gradually reduced some privileges to the hereditary aristocracy and adopted a regalist position towards the Church, with the aim of carrying out a series of basic reforms. At the end of the century, the quality of life of the Spaniards had improved, as demonstrated by the increase in the population of almost three million inhabitants, a lower figure, however, than that of other European countries.
Enlightenment ideas were entering Spain through various routes:
- The diffusion of the ideas of some illustrated such as Gregorio Mayans, Martín Sarmiento and Benito Jerónimo Feijoo.
- The propagation of French encyclopaedist ideas (Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu), despite the censorship of the time to avoid its introduction into the Peninsula and the monitoring of the Inquisition.
- Translations of French books of all genders and recruitment of foreign teachers or scholars in certain subjects.
- The journeys of study and knowledge of European life and customs carried out by scholars and intellectuals.
- The appearance of newspapers or publications where illustrated ideas were disseminated.
- Creation of a series of cultural and Economic societies of friends of the country aimed at promoting the social and economic progress of Spain through the reform of traditional practices. The first of the societies was founded in the Basque Country in 1765, and soon spread throughout the nation. They were made up of illustrations from the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the clergy. This century created agencies of great importance, such as Royal Spanish Academy, founded to take care of the Castilian language and its literature. His motto was Clean, fixed and splendor. This society intended to establish rules for the correct use of language, and its first effort was devoted to the elaboration of a Dictionary of the Castilian language, known today as Dictionary of Authoritiesin six volumes (1726-1739). In it you can find the etymology of each word, and every disappointment is accompanied by an appointment drawn from the work of a famous writer (the authorities) who demonstrates its existence and illustrates its use. Other institutions that emerged at that time were the National Library (1712), the Royal Academy of History (1738), the Royal Botanic Garden (1755), the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (1751), the Royal Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona (1752) and the Museo del Prado (1819)
The maximum splendor of the Enlightenment in Spain was during the reign of Carlos III, and its decline, around the dates of the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, in 1808. The reformers, despite have the support of the Crown, did not obtain the recognition of privileged groups; many were described as foreigners and accused of violating tradition and religious teaching. After the French Revolution, some were persecuted and even imprisoned.
Castilian in the 18th century
In this century, a struggle was waged in favor of the clarity and naturalness of the artistic language, in which many writers fought against the remains that still survived of the Baroque style, that is, the use of artifice to which it had arrived the late Baroque.
Latin was used in universities as an academic language, but little by little it was replaced in that role. They wanted to return to the splendor of the Golden Age as a literary language, but for this it was necessary to develop forms of expression in accordance with European experimental sciences, a task carried out by Feijoo, Sarmiento, Mayans, Jovellanos, Forner, Capmany, among others. In 1813, after the War of Independence, the Board created by the Regency to carry out a general reform of education, ordered the exclusive use of Spanish at the university.
Many of the enlightened, for the modernization of Spain, defended the implementation of the teaching of other languages (French, English, Italian) in the centers, and the translation into Spanish of outstanding works. The first was opposed by those who defended the priority of the classical languages (Latin and Greek) over modern ones, and the second by those who rejected the translations because they would introduce unnecessary foreign words into Spanish and endanger their identity. Thus, two positions arose: casticismo, which defended a pure language, without mixing voices or strange twists, with words documented by the authorities (the Royal Spanish Academy); and purism, which was totally opposed to the penetration of neologisms, especially foreign ones, accusing their opponents of "staining the language". The fight that congregates the attention of the people, is enough to focus all the power of Casticismo governed with subtle brushstrokes in a period that will be known as purist within the Castilian of the s. XVIII.
Eighteenth-century literature stages
Three stages can be distinguished in the Spanish literature of the 18th century:
- Antibarroquismo (up to 1750, approximately): It is fought against the style of the last Baroque, considered excessively rhetoric and twisted, especially since 1737, the year in which the Poetry of Ignacio de Luzán, the publication of the Diario de los Literatos de EspañaGregorio Mayans and Siscar publishes his Life of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and Feijoo publishes the seventh volume of its Universal critical theatre and reprint for the sixth time the first.
- Neoclasicism (Up to the end of the s.XVIII): It is based on the classic style inherited in Europe from the cultures of Rome and ancient Greece. The writers imitate the ancient classic authors such as Virgilio, Horacio and Ovidio and their boom spread from the reign of Fernando VI until well entered the centuryXIX.
- Prerromanticism (finals of XVIII and beginnings XIX): The influence of the English philosopher John Locke and Laurence Sterne, together with that of the French Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, will bring forth a new feeling, dissatisfied with the tyranny of reason, which asserts the right of individuals to express their personal emotions (repressed then by the neoclassicals), among them. This current announces the decay of Neoclasicism and opens the doors of Romanticism.
Prose
Narrative writing is almost non-existent in Spain during this period. Practically, it is reduced to the Life of Diego de Torres y Villarroel, or the story Fray Gerundio de Campazas of Padre Isla.
On the contrary, the essay, or essay genres in general, is the dominant genre. This prose is partly educational and doctrinal, shows a desire to approach the problems of the moment, tends to reform customs and usually makes use of the epistolary form. On the other hand, it deals with the great genres of historiography, what we would currently call Human Sciences and, in general, sciences, because it should not be forgotten that the eighteenth-century and enlightened concept of Literature embraces both poetry or artistic literature and all science.. The [[Escuela Universalista Española del siglo XVIII]] defines the great current, made up largely of enlightened and expelled Jesuits, regarding these genres.
Another modality of great influence at this time was the newspaper. Literary, scientific or curiosities, publications such as the Diario de los Literatos de España, El Censor or the Correo de Madrid contributed to disseminate in Spain the theories and ideas of the moment, establishing the principles of the Enlightenment.
Sometimes, the intellectual exchange of these works produces controversial controversy, such as the one that was established on the occasion of the provocative "What is owed to Spain?" from the French Masson de Morvilliers in his Enciclopédie Méthodique (1782). It was answered with the claim Apologetic Prayer for Spain and its literary merit by Juan Pablo Forner (1786); which was in turn ridiculed by the satire Apologetic Prayer in Defense of the Flourishing State of Spain (1793), better known as Pan y Toros sometimes attributed to Jovellanos, but really of Leon de Arroyal.
Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
The Benedictine monk Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo y Montenegro (Orense, 1676-Oviedo, 1764), had an Aristotelian background, although his mentality was completely modern. His works reached numerous editions and provoked many controversies, so many that Fernando VI, in an act of enlightened despotism, had to defend him by appointing him an honorary advisor and prohibiting attacks against his work and his person.
His knowledge was manifested in a multitude of essays that he grouped into the eight volumes of Universal Critical Theater (1726-1739) and in the five of Scholar and Curious Letters (1742-1760). Feijoo saw it necessary to write to get Spain out of his backwardness; With this purpose, he gave his work a didactic character, markedly Catholic, but with the intention that the new empirical and rational currents would take root, at least in the educated classes. He was very critical of superstitions and false miracles.
Feijoo contributed to the consolidation of Spanish as an educated language by defending its use against Latin, which was still used in universities. He also accepted the introduction of new voices, whenever they were necessary, regardless of where they came from. His production covers very diverse fields, such as economics, politics, astronomy, mathematics, physics, history, religion, etc. His style was characterized by its simplicity, naturalness and clarity. For many critics, Spanish prose becomes modern with Feijoo.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
Jovellanos (Gijón, 1744-Puerto de Vega, Asturias, 1811) is probably the most important Spanish essayist of the 18th century. Belonging to a wealthy family, he studied Law and was sent to Seville, where he came into contact by letter with the Salamanca School of Poetics. In Madrid, as mayor of Casa y Corte, his political activity was constantly increasing. After an exile, he was appointed by Manuel Godoy Minister of Grace and Justice, and later State Counselor. Losing the confidence of the minister, he was imprisoned in Majorca in the Bellver Castle, until the Mutiny of Aranjuez, which overthrew Godoy, restored his freedom. In 1808 he was part of the Central Board that faced the Napoleonic army. He was persecuted by the French and tried to move to Cádiz, but inclement weather forced him to take refuge in the port of Vega de Navia, where he died.
Jovellanos began writing lyrical poetry, with the pastoral name (very common in his time) of Jovino, and with Enlightenment ideals. Like Gallows, he satirizes the uneducated aristocracy in his satire A Arnesto. But he soon tired of poetry, which he considered an adolescent's game to which reason did not apply, and which was unbecoming of a respectable man. Curiously, years later he invites in verse the insurrection of 1808 in the Song for the Astures against the French .
He also composed The Honest Delinquent, a neoclassical reformist drama. A law had been promulgated that sentenced the survivor of the duels to death, considering the offender and the offended equally guilty; Jovellanos is based on this in his drama, because for him, only the offender is to blame. The work follows the line of sentimental comedy, so admired in France, and its tone is already pre-romantic.
One of his most widely disseminated writings, even internationally, was the Report on the Agrarian Law file (1795), which he wrote on behalf of the Real Sociedad Económica Matritense de Amigos del País, from the perspective of economic liberalism, along the lines of Adam Smith (who had published The Wealth of Nations in 1776).
Clarity, conciseness and sobriety are the characteristic features of Jovellanos' didactic work.
José Gallows
José de Cadalso y Vázquez de Andrade (1741-1782) is another of the great prose writers of the 18th century. He wrote important literary works, his most important creation being Morrocan Letters . It was said of him that he possessed a vast culture, enriched by his travels through England, France, Germany and Italy. He was in the military and earned the rank of colonel. He was deeply in love with the actress María Ignacia Ibáñez, who died very early, in 1771, due to typhus. The excesses to which she indulged -Gadalso even tried to dig her up- earned her banishment in Salamanca (ordered to cure her of her alienation). He was subsequently posted to Extremadura, Andalusia, Madrid and finally Gibraltar, where he died during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. His lifeless body was buried in the Parish of Santa María la Coronada in San Roque (Cádiz).
As a poet, and under the name of "Dalmiro", he composed the work Ocios de mi juventud (1773). His love for the actress María Ignacia Ibáñez brought him closer to the dramatic world. Despite the fact that he wrote three tragedies, only one of them was staged, and with little success: Don Sancho García, count of Castilla (1771). His prose work is, however, more extensive. In Gloomy Nights he narrates in dialogue the frustrated desire of the main character, Tediato, to rescue the body of his beloved from the tomb. Entirely eighteenth century is the book The scholars in violet , in which he attacks the false intellectuals; seven lessons that satirize those who claim to know a lot by studying little.
However, the Moroccan Letters (1789), published posthumously, are the ones that give the most importance to the literary production of Gallows. Following a model widely cultivated in France (for example, Montesquieu's Persian Letters), the author composes a book with ninety letters that intersect Gazel, a Moor visiting Spain, his Moroccan tutor and friend Ben-Beley, and Nuño Núñez, Gazel's Christian friend. Among them they comment on the historical past of Spain and its current life and judge the work of the rulers and the customs of the country.
The Universalist School
The [[Escuela Universalista Española del siglo XVIII]] represents a late Christian Enlightenment, cultural, largely constituted by exiled Jesuits who wrote part of their work in Italy. It is about thirty authors, headed by the creator of the Universal History of Letters and Sciences (Origin, progress and current state of all literature), Juan Andrés (1740-1817), also author of the most important book Spanish on a trip to Italy: Family Letters (Viaje de Italia), and various innovative scientific and bibliographical studies that placed him at the intellectual head of the Europe of his time; by Lorenzo Hervás (1735-1809), founder of narrative anthropology and, above all, of comparative linguistics (Catalog of the languages of known nations); and Antonio Eximeno (1729-1808), brilliant critic (Apologia de Cervantes), satirical critical narrator (Vida de D. Lazarillo Vizcardi) and the most important Spanish musicologist (< i>Of the origin and rules of Music).
The Universalist School is made up of a range of sectors or sub-schools: historiographical, literary, scientific, bibliographical, linguistic, naturalistic, botanical (Antonio José Cavanilles (1745-1804), José Celestino Mutis (1732-1808), Pedro Franco Dávila...), and even in the last meteorological term.
Lyrical
In 1737, Ignacio Luzán included the aesthetic ideas of Neoclassicism in his Poetics. This style triumphed in Spain, imposing criteria of utility and service to humanity, together with the desire for aesthetic pleasure. Artistic ideals imported from France dominated, "good taste" and restraint, and feelings and passions were repressed. The subjection to the rules was general, fleeing from spontaneity and imagination, which were replaced by the didactic desire.
Neoclassical poetry dealt with historical, costumbrist, and satirical themes. In the variant called Rococo, more luxurious and ornate, pastoral themes that exalted pleasure and gallant love dominated. Usual forms were odes, epistles, elegies and romances.
Important names in Spanish poetry are Juan Meléndez Valdés, the highest Spanish representative of the Rococo, Nicolás Fernández de Moratín and the fabulists Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego. Among the poets, Margarita Hickey, María Getrudis Hore, María Joaquina Viera y Clavijo, Nicolasa de Helguero and, in the transition to romanticism, María Rosa Gálvez stand out.
Neoclassical literature was developed mainly in three cities: Salamanca, by people related to its University; Seville with the influence of his assistant (position similar to that of mayor) Pablo de Olavide and Madrid, around the Fonda de San Sebastián. In this way, the writers of that tendency are grouped into schools or poetic groups: The escuela salmantina, in which Cadalso is found, Melendez Valdes, Jovellanos and Forner; the Sevillian school, which includes the writers Manuel María Arjona, José Marchena, José María Blanco White and Alberto Lista, who soon evolved into early Romanticism (Pre-Romanticism); and the Madrid group made up of Vicente García de la Huerta, Ramón de la Cruz, Iriarte, Samaniego and the Fernández de Moratín family.
Salamanca School
Juan Melendez Valdes
Meléndez Valdés (Ribera del Fresno, Badajoz, 1754-Montpellier, France, 1814) is considered one of the best poets of the 18th century . He was a professor in Salamanca, where he maintained friendships with Cadalso and Jovellanos. He worked as a jurist, occupying posts in Zaragoza, Valladolid and finally in Madrid, where he acted as Supreme Court prosecutor. Once his mentor, Jovellanos, fell out of favor with Godoy, he ordered himself banished to Medina del Campo, later to Zamora, and finally to Salamanca. He was a Frenchified during the War of Independence and avoided being shot in Oviedo, but he had no choice but to go into exile after the defeat of the French army.
Two stages can be distinguished in the lyric of Meléndez Valdés:
- In the first one he is attracted to his youth by the predominant Rococo poetry and by the influence of José Cadalso. It composes anacreontic poems and pastoriles with love as a predominant theme. From this first stage, the egloga Batilo.
- However, after the death of Cadalso, and following the advice of Jovellanos, he thought that the lyric pastoril was inappropriate of a magistrate, so he composed another type of poetry more in accordance with his trade. As Jovellanos, sensitizes to social inequalities, defends the need to undertake reforms that improve the lives of the people, criticizes courteous customs and their poetry becomes philosophical, sentimental and reflective.
His style, in its beginnings, was artificial and conventional, but later it became very careful and precise. He himself defined his purpose when writing: & # 34; I have taken care to explain myself with nobility and to use language worthy of the great issues that I have dealt with & # 34; .
The group from Madrid
The reformist ideas of the 18th century quickly permeated the Court and the bourgeois media. In addition to the Academies, there were also other private initiatives that greatly influenced literature, such as the Fonda de San Sebastián, founded by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín and his son Leandro, along with Cadalso and Jovellanos.
The fabulists: Iriarte and Samaniego
These two writers were also part of the Madrid group. In order to correct defects and show rational values, they wrote fables.
- Thomas Iriarte: (La Orotava, Tenerife, 1750 - Madrid, 1791). It was a regular contertulio of the Fonda de San Sebastian. He started writing comedies of social criticism, as My lordagainst the poor education of the young people of the time, and their female replica, The spoiled miss, whose protagonist gets seduced by a supposed marquis and loses his true love. Despite this, the true fame of Iriarte is due to its seventy-six Literary fablesin which the neoclassicist ideal is supported by animal comics.
- Felix Maria Samaniego: (Laguardia, Álava, 1745-1801). He studied in France, where he adopted the encyclopaedist ideas of the time. His most important work was Moral fables (1781-1784) he wrote for the students of the Royal Basque Seminary, following the model of Esopo and Fedro, through the French La Fontaine.
The Sevillian school
Like Salamanca, the Seville city also had a great poetic tradition. In 1751 the Academy of Good Letters was founded, which promoted literary activity. From 1760, and following the arrival of Pablo de Olavide as mayor of the Government of Andalusia, culture in that city was notably promoted. In the year 1776, the enlightened man is persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition.
Due to the influence of José Cadalso y Meléndez, more ornate and colorful poems were written than those of the Salamanca school, also influenced by Fernando de Herrera. In the Sevillian school, poets such as Manuel María Arjona (1771-1820), José Marchena (1768-1820), José María Blanco White (1775-1841) and Alberto Lista (1775-1848) stood out. They wrote patriotic poems inciting the fight for freedom after the invasion of the French and the return of Ferdinand VII, already in the XIX century. Some of them ended up in exile.
Theater
In theater, the main cultivators were those of the Madrid group. They submitted to what the classical and modern preceptors taught, and created a theater in pursuit of the political and moral interests of the time.
There are three trends:
- Traditional tension.
- During the first half of the centuryXVIII The theatre is in decline. There are Calderon de la Barca continuors, lacking almost all inventive. Among the public are the comedies of entanglement, magic, miracles of saints and history. For the aristocracy, zarzuelas and operas were assembled, of Italian taste. Some translations of French works are also premiered. The illustrators criticized and satirized this dramatic current, calling for the representation of works to teach good examples and to respect the aristotelian rules.
- Neoclassical tendency.
- Trying to end this decadence, Aranda's count sent to rescue the works of the Golden Age that did not violate the aristotelian guidelines too much, adapting them if necessary, and also supporting the translation of foreign works. In turn, he also encouraged neoclassical writers to compose new tragedies linked to reason and new reforms that were being imposed. Several illustrious authors accepted these ideas, although few works attracted the public.
- Popular tension.
- Sainetes enjoyed popular support. They were written in verse, related to the steps and intermesses of the previous centuries. The most important author of sainetes was Ramon de la Cruz.
The theater adopts the new fashions that came from France. In the neoclassical theater, reason and harmony were also imposed as the norm. The so-called “rule of the three units” was followed, which required a single action, a single setting and a coherent chronological time in the development of the dramatic action. The separation of the comic and the tragic was established. Imaginative restraint was imposed, eliminating everything that was considered exaggerated or in "bad taste". An educational and moralizing purpose was adopted, which would serve to spread the universal values of culture and progress.
Although less rationalist than other genres, tragedy cultivated historical themes, as is the case of the best-known, Raquel, by Vicente García de la Huerta. But without a doubt the most representative theater of the moment was that of Leandro Fernández de Moratín, creator of what has been called "Moratinian comedy". Faced with the tragic genre, the most common at the time, and practiced by his father, Nicolás, and with the manners and kind farce of Ramón de la Cruz, Moratín Jr. ridiculed the vices and customs of his time, in a clear attempt to convert theater in a vehicle to moralize customs.
Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Son of Nicolás Fernández de Moratín (Madrid, 1760 - Paris, 1828), Leandro is the leading eighteenth-century playwright. His father is responsible for his neoclassical orientation. Protected by Jovellanos and Godoy, he traveled through England, France (he witnessed the outbreak of the French Revolution) and Italy. He fell in love with Paquita Muñoz, much younger than him, with whom he never married because of her desire not to commit. He was a Frenchified and accepted from José Bonaparte the position of Senior Librarian, for which he was exiled to France, where he will die after the defeat of the invaders.
Work
As a poet, he wrote satirical poems such as Satire against the vices introduced into Castilian poetry, a subject that he returns to in prose in La defeat de los pedantes. Current critics consider Moratín the most outstanding lyricist of the 18th century. In the poem Elegía a las muses , already old, he bids farewell to poetry and theater, which had been his reason for living.
As a dramatic author, he wrote only five comedies that earned him a great reputation among enlightened people. In The old man and the girl and in The yes of the girls (1805), he defends the right of a woman to accept or not accept her spouse against the imposition of the family, since it was frequent to marry young women with wealthy old men. In La prude he criticizes hypocrisy and false piety. Another comedy is The Baron and finally La comedia nueva or El café (1792), a mockery of authors who ignore Aristotelian rules.
Ramón de la Cruz
The farce artist Ramón de la Cruz (Madrid, 1731-1794) was one of the authors most applauded by the public and most criticized by the neoclassicalists (although some of them, given the popular support for his works, retracted). He began by writing neoclassical tragedies, rejecting the "messy" theater; that he preferred people. However, his economic needs made him approach less illustrated genres but more acclaimed by the public and the actors. In this way he began to write Spanish-themed zarzuelas and, at the same time, farces. Of the latter he wrote more than four hundred, generally in octosyllabic verses, and some in hendecasyllabic verses. The characters in this theatrical subgenre are popular (manolas, majos, mocked husbands, masons, chestnut women, ruined hidalgos, etc.) and the action usually takes place in Madrid: The San Isidro meadow, El Prado in the afternoon, El Rastro in the morning; its end, sometimes wants to be exemplary. The most famous of the sainetes is Manolo , a satire on the theater that was written by his neoclassical enemies. With his maxim "I write and the truth dictates to me", he was able to find an inexhaustible source in the town, the same one that, in greater depth, would inspire Francisco de Goya.
Pre-romanticism
Some works of the Escuela Salamanca herald the beginning of Romanticism. Thus, in Las noches lugubres by José Cadalso, madness is introduced, gloomy and nocturnal environments and a great love passion. Other important authors are Nicasio Álvarez de Cienfuegos (1764-1809), Manuel José Quintana (1772-1857), Juan Nicasio Gallego (1777-1853) and José Somoza (1781-1852).
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