Ruin and restitution: reinterpreting romanticism in Spain

Abstract

To the author of this work, Spanish is exclusively a conservative affair, since in his view Spain missed the romanticism that characterizes the writing of many European authors of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. He presents a restitutional theory of that period in Spanish cultural and political history. Against the predominant belief in the existence of a liberal, progressive high in 19th-century Spain, Silver confirms the existence of an historical, conservative, politically interested romanticism. He also sets out to show that even someone such as Bequer was more of a pre-romantic writer, as indicated by his conservative political views, his unselfconscious incorporation of the Enlightenment's sublime, and his use of rhetorical devices. On the other hand, a poet such as Luis Cernuda achieved high romanticism, but not until well into the 20th century - and not as a culmination of any continuous Spanish tradition, but from the imported ruins of the old European romanticism.