Spanish literature of the nineteenth century begins with the patriotic poets, Manuel Jose Quintana (1772-1857) and Juan Nicasio Gallego (1777-1853), whose lyrics voice the sentiments of a party sprung up to combat the French invader. Quintana was the Tyrtnus of the struggle against the Napoleonic arms, and he attained his greatest success in the heroic ode (Al armament° de las provincias contra los Franceses and A Espaiia despises de la- revoluciOn de Alarm 180S). His friend Gallego is also seen at his best in the burning patriotic lyric, and although the hulk of his verse is slight, he was a good literary artist. The classic influence still dominated Quin tana and Gallego, and is no less clearly marked in the members of a poetical coterie which from its centre may conveniently be termed the School of Seville. The members of this school, of whom the chief were Manuel Marfa de Arjona, (1771 1820), Jose Marfa Blanco (1775-1841, known in the history of English literature as Blanco White), Alberto Lista (1775-1848), and Felix Jose Reinoso (1772-1841), sought to reform the prevailing had taste by setting up the authority of a respectable classic tradition. They contributed efficaciously to the restoration of a proper (esthetic sense in Spanish literary aims, and they also helped to improve the purely formal side of Spanish verse by developing rhyme and metre.
In the thirties of the nineteenth century the ro mantic movement began to appear in the Spanish Peninsula, somewhat belated, indeed, but none the less sweeping in its effects. Two elements con tributed to the establishment of romanticism in Spain: (1) the influence of foreign literatures; and (2) the influence of the older national and in particular of the drama of Lope and Calderon and of the romances. Even this latter influence did not make itself felt until foreigners had aroused Spain to a realization of the worth of her dramatists of the Golden Age and of her ballads. Many of the young writers of the early part of the nineteenth century had opposed the despotic administration of Ferdinand VII., had been obliged to flee the land, and, going to France and England, they had had some contact with the romantic movements of those countries. The romantic writers whom political considerations did not force to abandon their native region founded, about 1830, a club called the Parnasillo, which, as the Cenacle had done in France, was to herald the new ideas.
In the lyrics of Manuel de Cabanyes (1808-33; Preludios de mi lira, 1833) there is no tinge of romanticism; but a transition stage is visible in the writings of Martinez de la Rosa (1789 1862), in the main a man of classic tastes, yet who in two plays, the Abcn-Humeya and the Conjuration de Venecia (1834), entered into the domain of romanticism. Jose de Lazza (1809-37) in his novel El donee' de Don Enrique el Doliente, and in his play Macias, showed similar romantic tendencies. The triumph of romanticism was insured by the performance in 1835 of the drama Don Alvaro of Angel de Saavedra (1791-1865), one of the writers whom Ferdinand's tyranny had compelled to seek a refuge in England and France. The romantic principles to which
he gave effect in this work governed also the composition of his lyric El faro de Malta. and of his epic poem El Moro eaTosito, in the latter of which he revived the Old Spanish legend of the Infantes of Lara. In the person of Jose de Espronceda (1810-42), the author of the mag nificent though fragmentary poem El diablo mnndo, and of the Estudiantc de Salamanca, there are represented both the romantic element of revolt against social and literary conventions, which in England is strongly marked in the per son of Byron, and that element of Bohemianism which characterizes so many of the French ro manticists. Lyric supremacy is disputed with Espronceda by Jose Zorrilla (1817-93). who is, however, more justly celebrated for his treat ment of legendary material from the Spanish Middle Ages than for his purely lyric endeavors. In the Don Juan Tenorio he gives a modern version of the story at bottom of the Builador de Sevilla, a drama of the Golden Age. The Cuban poetess Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (1816-73), who spent most. of her life in Spain and there became famous, had affiliations with the romantic school. Her lyrics owe no small amount of their inspira tion to Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and lingo; her novels reflect the methods of Dumas the Elder and George Sand. Sentimentalism appears in two well-known dramas, the Trorador• of Antonio Garcia Gutierrez (1813-84), on which Verdi's opera is founded, and the rtmantes de Teruel of Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806 S0), a play which gave new life to an old Spanish story of true love that did not run smoothly.
The passing of the romantic movement be comes evident after the beginning of the fifth decade of the century. The fertile playwright Manuel Bret6n de los Herreros (1796-1873) had temporary connections with it, but be gained his repute mainly as a writer of lively dramas of manners, although in his masterpiece, the comedy entitled Pseudo del matrimonio ( 1S52), he paved the way for the coming psychological drama of Ayala and Tamayo y Bans. Adelardo Lopez de Ayala (1828-79) gives us, in his mercilessly so ciological play El tanto por cicnto (1861), a de tailed analysis of the modern greed for wealth that has stifled the nobler instincts of man and made him capable of the basest treachery; and in his Coast/c/o (1878) he makes another power ful attack upon the positivism and the lack of idealism in our modern life. The psychological development is also obvious in the work of Manuel Tamayo y Bans (1829-98). In Lo posi ti-ro (1862) he treats the positivism of the mod ern world with no less severity than does ..Nyala, and in his chief play, drama nuero (1867), he portrays the slowly growing and finally all-pervading power of marital jealousy.