Spanish Literature

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

NAME         “The Generation of 1927: The Second Golden Age in an Ungrateful Spain”

FACULTY    PALOMA MARTINEZ-CARBAJO

DESCRIPTION

Taking as a main reference the “birth,” “development,” and “fall” of the so-called Generation of 1927, this class intends for its participants to submerge themselves in the conflictive, albeit, emotional literary and artistic ambiance of the first quarter of the 20th century in Spain. In order to understand this movement, we will travel to the end of the 19th century and cover some of the aspects of Latin American Modernism and their “blue” aesthetics, the Spanish Generation of '98 and their existential crisis, and the Generation of '14 and its direct impact in the following decades, to, lastly, focus on the Generation of '27 and its main representatives. Finally, we will stop at the threshold of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and its repercussions in Spanish society and in the world of the arts and letters. With the beginning of this conflict, the project of cultural modernity that starts in 1898 is abruptly halted by a coup d'etat against a democratically elected government, and a subsequent civil war. As Habermas would say, Modernity is, in this occasion, an inconclusive project.



Considered by many as the Second Golden Age of Spanish Literature, although some critics refer to it as the silver age, the group of writers, poets, philosophers, playwrights, thinkers, intellectuals, and artists (and, above all, friends), form one of the richest, most fruitful and most innovative periods in the history of Spain. Circumscribed, as José Ortega y Gasset would say, in a tumultuous social-political moment, their production combines quantity with quality, art for art’s sake with compromised art, and creative audacity honoring tradition. Be it in Ortega y Gasset’s tertulias, the Revista de Occidente publications, the circle of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, the camaraderie of the Residencia de Estudiantes, or the La Barraca project, the components of this generation and their works continue to be relevant 80 years later.