Cambridge Spain (Novel) - Chap. 9 (Decadence in fin de siglo Spain)

Cambridge Companion to Spanish Novel

“Chapter 9: Decadence and innovation in fin de siglo Spain” – Noel Valis

Comps people mentioned (highlighted in blue)

-          Ramón del Valle-Inclán (pg. 138-139, 141-143)

Important points (highlighted in red)

-          Idea that fin-de-siglo narrative is broken down into smaller fragments (138)

-          Idea of decadence – decaying of an old society due to arrival of a new modern society??; obsession with theme/metaphor of decadence (139-140)

General notes

-          Deep sense of disillusionment in Spain at end of 19^th century (138)

-          Crisis of 1898 – loss of colonial empire after war with the U.S. in Cuba (138)

-          “growing suspicion that the nation had never really coalesced ideologically or historically” (138)

o   Sense of isolation rather than unity

-          Fin de siglo desire to evade unpleasant historical realities (138)

-          “narrative tends to break down into smaller fragments, thus on the one hand mimicking the perceived instabilities of the period and on the other problematizing an uneasy relationship with the present” (138)

-          Ramón del Valle-Inclán

o   Regional Galician context; legitimization of a renascent Galician culture; creation of a Galician-Spanish lineage

o   Plays with the idea of lineage – plays with concept of decaying aristocracies, characters and family histories that symbolically serve as figures of a socio-historical crisis, “the crisis of a decadent society faced with the arrival of the modern” (139)

-          An obsessive preoccupation with decadence defines the last years of the century throughout Europe (139-140)

o   Decadence is not only a central theme; it becomes the explanatory metaphor for all of the problems of the time period

o   Idea that the “metaphor” of decadence was used to justify cultural or historical decline

o   “Preoccupation with decadence is only partially about the past, and has more to do with the present, with dissatisfaction over present realities, which are viewed through the prism of pastness” (140)

o   Decadence contains both a backward and a forward movement (140)

o   “the paradoxical nature of decadence and its resistance to definition are among the most important elements of its meaning” (140)

-          “In narrative, decadent writing wavers between the mimetic drive toward realism and an anti-realistic impulse away from the present, away from coherent, linear plot and character developments” (140)

-          “In Spain, one of the best literary examples of decadence as both innovative art form and a generative metaphor is the early work of Ramón del Valle-Inclán” (141) – talks about two of his texts that aren’t on comps list

o   What many writers considered truly decadent: “the dull middle-class spirit of conformity and cowardice” (142)

-          Idea of decadence as a transitional form, springing off of romanticism and realism, but moving away from both (140-141)

-          Idea of link between genealogy and writing (143)

o   Idea of decadence in old aristocratic lines

o   “In all of these decadent narratives, something has gone wildly wrong with the family histories contained therein” (144)

-          “If decadent writing innovatively looks forward to modernism and the avant-garde, it also looks backward, to decline and the past” (145)

o   Sense of loss of past glory

-          “The generative metaphor of decadence insists on decay but attributes a morbid specialness, a strange vitality, to it” (146)

-          “highly self-conscious writing of decadence in which language creates figuratively and linguistically objects of art, verbal artifice” (148)

-          Fragmentation of the human body in decadent writing (147-148)