The Generation of '98 (Spanish : Generación del 98), also called Generation of 1898 (Spanish: Generación de 1898), was a group of novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers active in Spain at the time of the Spanish–American War (1898), committed to cultural and aesthetic renewal, and associated with modernismo.
The name was coined by José Martínez Ruiz (commonly known as "Azorín") in his 1913 essays titled "La generación de 1898", alluding to the moral, political, and social crisis in Spain produced by the loss of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam after defeat in the Spanish–American War that same year. Historian Raymond Carr defines the Generation of '98 as the "group of creative writers who were born in the seventies, whose major works fall in the two decades after 1898". [1]
The intellectuals included in this group are known for their criticism of the Spanish literary and educational establishments, which they saw as having characteristics of conformism, ignorance, and a lack of any true spirit. Their criticism was coupled with and heavily connected to the group's dislike for the Restoration movement that was occurring in Spanish government.
The group that has become known as The Generation of '98 was affected by several major events and trends in Spanish history. According to Carr's definition of the group, most of them were born in the 1870s. [1] These men were especially informed by Spain's defeat and humiliation in the Spanish–American War in 1898, which crystallized into two distinct political movements, Republicanism and Carlist Monarchism, marked by the oscillation of power (a zeal for reform characterized these years of Spanish history):
The first intellectual criticism took place at the dawn of the Restoration movement. In 1875, the minister for development, Manuel Orovio (1817–1883), sought to reinforce traditional "Spanish values" such as the dogma of contemporary Spanish Catholicism by an edict known as the Decreto Orovio.
This "crackdown" was a response to various attempts, notably but not exclusively by the intellectual elite listed below, to introduce some form of liberal democracy both in Spanish academic life and in the wider society.
Several progressive professors were dismissed from the Central University of Madrid for promoting the ideas of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832), a German philosopher who advocated Krausism.
In 1876, these dismissed professors, led by Francisco Giner de los Ríos, founded the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE), or The Free Educational Institution, a secular private educational institution that started with university-level instruction and later extended its activities to primary and secondary education.
Their work constituted an indirect repudiation of the official instruction of the time, which they had found ineffective, insufficient, and subject to suffocating control by political and religious interests. The Institution departed from this norm by stressing the importance of intellectual freedom and moral self-improvement.
The Generation of '98 intellectuals objected to the meticulously organized structure of the Restoration system of government and the corruption that it fostered. After Spain's bloody and decisive defeat in the Spanish–American War, which resulted in thousands of dead Spaniards and the loss of all of Spain's remaining colonies in the Americas and the Pacific, these writers were prompted to voice their criticism. They agreed on the urgency of finding a means, in areas of thought and activity separate from politics, of rescuing Spain from its catatonic state.
The writers, poets and playwrights of this generation maintained a strong intellectual unity, opposed the Restoration of the monarchy in Spain, revived Spanish literary myths, and broke with classical schemes of literary genres. They brought back traditional and lost words and always alluded to the old kingdom of Castile, with many supporting the idea of Spanish Regionalism.
Often, literature produced by these writers conveyed themes of nostalgia for the past glory of Spain, especially its traditions and landscape. Conversely, they also present criticisms of the sociopolitical situation during that era, drawing conclusions about factors that caused the decline of Spain. As such, common characteristics of these works involved a minimalistic writing style, employing third person narration and a heavy dependence on dialogue instead of descriptions to advance the narrative. Many writers also experimented with new forms of genres, as Miguel de Unamuno did in conceptualizing the nivola. [2]
Most texts in this literary era were produced in the years immediately after 1910 and are generally marked by the justification of radicalism and rebellion. Examples of this are the last poems incorporated to "Campos de Castilla", of Antonio Machado; Miguel de Unamuno's articles written during the First World War or in the essayistic texts of Pío Baroja.
The criticism of the "Generation of '98" today from modern intellectuals is that the group was characterized by an increase of egoism, and by a great feeling of frustration with Spanish society and politics.
Some of the key intellectual minds of the Generation of '98 include:
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca.
Spanish literature is literature written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the Kingdom of Spain. Its development coincides and frequently intersects with that of other literary traditions from regions within the same territory, particularly Catalan literature, Galician intersects as well with Latin, Jewish, and Arabic literary traditions of the Iberian Peninsula. The literature of Spanish America is an important branch of Spanish literature, with its own particular characteristics dating back to the earliest years of Spain’s conquest of the Americas.
The Generation of '27 was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. Their first formal meeting took place in Seville in 1927 to mark the 300th anniversary of the death of the baroque poet Luis de Góngora. Writers and intellectuals paid homage at the Ateneo de Sevilla, which retrospectively became the foundational act of the movement.
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was a Spanish politician and historian known principally for serving six terms as prime minister and his overarching role as "architect" of the regime that ensued with the 1874 restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. He was assassinated by Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo.
The Restoration or Bourbon Restoration was the period in Spanish history between the First Spanish Republic and the Second Spanish Republic from 1874 to 1931. It began on 29 December 1874, after a coup d'état by General Arsenio Martínez Campos ended the First Spanish Republic and restored the monarchy under Alfonso XII, and ended on 14 April 1931 with the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic.
The Residencia de Estudiantes, literally the "Student Residence", is a centre of Spanish cultural life in Madrid. The Residence was founded to provide accommodation for students along the lines of classic colleges at Bologna, Salamanca, Cambridge or Oxford. It became established as a cultural institution that helped foster and create the intellectual environment of Spain's brightest young thinkers, writers, and artists. The students there included Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca. Distinguished guests and speakers included Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Juan Ramón Jiménez or Rafael Alberti.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney was a prolific Spanish essayist, journalist and publicist. His early literary work adscribes him to the Generation of '98. Adept to Nietzschean and Social Darwinist ideas in his youth, he became close to Fabian socialism and later to distributism and social corporatism during his spell as correspondent in London from where he chronicled the Great War. During the years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he served as Ambassador to Argentina. A staunch militarist, he became at the end of his ideological path one of the most prominent far-right theorists against the Spanish Republic, leading the reactionary voices calling for a military coup. A member of the cultural group Acción Española, he spread the concept of "Hispanidad" (Spanishness). Imprisoned by Republican authorities after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was killed by leftist militiamen during a saca in the midst of the conflict.
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José Bergamín Gutiérrez was a Spanish writer, essayist, poet, and playwright. His father served as president of the canton of Málaga; his mother was a Catholic. Bergamín was influenced by both politics and religion and attempted to reconcile Communism and Catholicism throughout his life, remarking "I would die supporting the Communists, but no further than that."
Carmen Baroja Nessi was a Spanish writer and ethnologist who wrote under the pseudonym Vera Alzate. She was the sister of the writers Ricardo Baroja and Pío Baroja, and mother of the anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja and film director Pío Caro Baroja.
Regenerationism was an intellectual and political movement in late 19th century and early 20th century Spain. It sought to make objective and scientific study of the causes of Spain's decline as a nation and to propose remedies. It is largely seen as distinct from another movement of the same time and place, the Generation of '98. While both movements shared a similar negative judgment of the course of Spain as a nation in recent times, the regenerationists sought to be objective, documentary, and scientific, while the Generation of '98 inclined more to the literary, subjective and artistic.
Luis Rosales Camacho was a Spanish poet and essay writer member of the Generation of '36.
María de Maeztu Whitney was a Spanish educator, feminist, founder of the Residencia de Señoritas and the Lyceum Club in Madrid. She was sister of the writer, journalist and occasional diplomat, Ramiro de Maeztu and the painter Gustavo de Maeztu.
Abel Sánchez: A Story of Passion is a 1917 novel by Miguel de Unamuno. Abel Sanchez is a re-telling of the story of Cain and Abel set in modern times, which uses the parable to explore themes of envy.
The Generation of '36 is the name given to a group of Spanish artists, poets and playwrights who were working about the time of the Spanish Civil War.
Vicente Tomás Medina was a Spanish poet, dramatist and editor, and a symbol of local identity for the Murcia region of southeastern Spain. His best-known work, Aires murcianos, was taken up as a reference point for local cultural and social criticism, and was widely praised by contemporaries. In his time Medina was considered in Spain to be one of the country's most important writers, referred to as "the great contemporary Spanish poet" and "the Spanish poet of poets". His fame has since declined, and he is now little read; but he remains an important figure as the greatest poet to have written in the Murcian dialect.
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The 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881–1958) "for his lyrical poetry, which in Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistical purity" He is the third Spanish recipient of the prize after the dramatist Jacinto Benavente in 1922.