PAU Spanish Language and Literature II (Castilla-La Mancha) study materials
PAU Spanish Language and Literature II (Castilla-La Mancha) study resources

PAU Spanish Language and Literature II (Castilla-La Mancha): Spanish literature of the 20th and 21st centuries: authors, works, movements and genres

PAU Spanish Language and Literature II (Castilla-La Mancha) · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Spanish literature of the 20th and 21st centuries: authors, works, movements and genres

Castilla-La Mancha asks for a panorama question - movements, authors, works and genres of the 20th and 21st centuries - either as a short essay or attached to a fragment. Marks come from accurate names, dates and titles organised as an argument, not recited as a list.

1898–1936

  • Modernismo: Rubén Darío (Azul, Prosas profanas, Cantos de vida y esperanza), Manuel Machado; musicality, exoticism, sensory lexicon.
  • Generación del 98: Unamuno (Niebla, 1914; San Manuel Bueno, mártir), Azorín, Baroja (El árbol de la ciencia, 1911), Valle-Inclán (esperpento, Luces de bohemia), Antonio Machado (Campos de Castilla, 1912); tema de España, intrahistoria, sobriedad.
  • Novecentismo: Ortega y Gasset (La deshumanización del arte, 1925), Pérez de Ayala, Miró; Juan Ramón Jiménez (Diario de un poeta recién casado, 1917) and his search for «poesía desnuda».
  • Vanguardias: Ultraísmo, Creacionismo, Surrealismo; Ramón Gómez de la Serna and the greguería.
  • Generación del 27: Salinas, Guillén, Lorca (Romancero gitano, 1928; Poeta en Nueva York), Alberti (Marinero en tierra, 1925), Aleixandre, Cernuda, Dámaso Alonso. Popular tradition plus vanguard metaphor; romance, soneto, verso libre.

Posguerra

  • Poesía arraigada versus desarraigada (Hijos de la ira, Dámaso Alonso, 1944); poesía social (Blas de Otero; Celaya, Pido la paz y la palabra, 1955); Generación del 50 (Ángel González, Gil de Biedma, Claudio Rodríguez); novísimos (1970).
  • Novela: tremendismo (La familia de Pascual Duarte, 1942), La colmena (1951), objetivismo (El Jarama, 1955), experimental (Tiempo de silencio, 1962; Cinco horas con Mario, 1966).
  • Teatro: humour of Jardiel Poncela and Mihura (Tres sombreros de copa), Buero Vallejo (Historia de una escalera, 1949; El tragaluz), Sastre (Escuadra hacia la muerte, 1953).

Desde 1975

  • Novela: La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975) as turning point; Eduardo Mendoza, Javier Marías, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Almudena Grandes, Rosa Montero; return to plot, memory, historical reconstruction.
  • Poesía: poesía de la experiencia (García Montero), later pluralism and culturalismo.
  • Teatro: Alonso de Santos (Bajarse al moro, 1985), Paloma Pedrero, independent companies.

Worked example

Prompt: «La Generación del 27». Do not list seven names. Open with the label and the context (Residencia de Estudiantes, Gerardo Diego's anthologies of 1932), give three traits with one work each, and close with the effect of the Civil War (Lorca's death, the exile of Cernuda and Alberti).

Traps

Wrong dates; placing Juan Ramón inside the 27; calling Cela a social novelist; forgetting that Tres sombreros de copa was written in 1932 but staged in 1952.