We explain what costumbrismo is, its historical context and its common themes. In addition, the literary manners and its authors.
What is manners?
In history of art, is known as costumbrismo to an artistic movement, mainly pictorial and literary, which was proposed to reflect the traditions (hence its name) and the local uses that were typical of a society specific, such as their traditional folklore, their practices rituals or their daily life.
Costumbrismo arose in the nineteenth century, as a consequence of the aesthetic ideals promoted by the Romanticism, and although it was not exclusive to Spain, it was strongly linked to art and literature of said country, especially during the reign of Isabel II, "the Queen Castiza". However, this trend was also strong in the nascent Spanish-American republics, as a way of recovering the “identity collective ”local.
It is traditionally interpreted as a response to the advancement of realism and of the Industrial Revolution, which put in check the folkloric and traditional legacy linked to the rural past. Thus, costumbrismo does not propose to represent reality scientifically, as would realism and naturalism, but to recover a cultural legacy embodied in a picturesque, colorful, passionate way.
Historical context of manners
Strictly speaking, costumbrismo was born as an idea in the 18th century, with creators such as the Spanish playwright Ramón de la Cruz (1731-1794) and his comedy of manners, or the famous tapestry cartoons by the painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) . However, it had its heyday in 19th century Spain, which was a particularly turbulent and complicated period, of profound changes in the life of the country.
This implied, on the one hand, agricultural modernization, the result of the influence of the Industrial Revolution, and the triumph of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in all Europe. Also, the old monarchy collapsed absolutist and it was replaced by a constitutional and parliamentary monarchy.
All this occurred in the midst of a defeatist climate after the loss of the colonies American, due to the bloody Wars of Independence that began in the region at the beginning of the 19th century. The last of these took place between Spain and Cuba, whose victory in 1895 ended the Spanish imperial pretensions in America.
This atmosphere of change, similar to that of the rest of Europe, was not, however, so successful in Spain, a country that retained its marked agricultural spirit and did not fully industrialize, at least in comparison with the countries of Protestant Europe.
Even so, it was intense enough to provoke a century of politico-social tensions that led to the fall of the monarchy and the declaration of the short-lived First Spanish Republic in 1873, which succumbed in 1874 to a coup conservative that led to a dictatorship and Bourbon restoration at the turn of the century. These political dilemmas survived in Spain into the 20th century, and were the basis of the coming Spanish Civil War.
Themes of manners
The usual themes of manners have to do with:
- The customs of rural and peasant life, with the presence of rites, pictures of customs, family and folklore.
- The representative daily life of cities, especially with regard to its most iconic figures, such as priests, teachers, landowners, politicians.
- The meeting between the countryside and the city, usually reproducing a critical look at the new modern world, which moved away from the traditions and of what until then had been "own".
- The language regionalist, with the presence of Word games, sayings, ways to speaks and other "proper" modes of language.
- The dances, rites, festivals and popular ceremonies, the legends and the superstitions.
Literary custom
In the specific case of literature, costumbrismo set out to portray traditional popular life without any intention of criticizing it (something that would be present in realism), and for this it mainly made use of the prose, in three genders or fundamental manifestations:
- The pictures of customs. This is the name (or "articles of customs") to small texts of a literary and journalistic nature, which were usually published in newspapers and magazines as a diversion or an educational guide, and in which some of the traditions and folklore of the rural world were described in the most picturesque and colorful way possible. There were large compilations of these articles, such as Spaniards painted by themselves (1843-1844), where the work of 51 different authors is collected.
- The novel costumbrista. Also called "novel of customs", whose plot He used to explore different popular scenes with a marked local flavor, leaving out any ideological argument or social criticism. These types of novels, however, often had meeting points with the social novel of naturalism.
- The comedy costumbrista. Theatrical (or dramaturgical) variant of costumbrismo, consisted of the light representation, often funny, of daily scenes of rural life, or of bourgeois life, the latter often with intentions parodic or ironic. It has a very superficial critical intention, which does not seek to go to the foundations of society itself, but just to confront the public with a clumsy, funny version of their own lives and customs.
Custom authors
Gustave Doré is famous for his illustrations of Don Quixote, the Divine Comedy and the Bible.A partial list of customary authors should include the following names:
- Manuel Cabral Aguado -Bejarano (1827-1891), Spanish painter of the Andalusian school, considered one of the main exponents of both the genre and the school.
- Manuel Rodríguez de Guzmán (1818-1867), Spanish genre painter who began at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel de Hungary and later became part of the Andalusian school of manners.
- Juan Rodríguez Jiménez (1765-1830), Spanish painter known as “the Andalusian Goya”, whose beginnings were painting religious pictures for the Cathedral of Cádiz. His work survives to a large extent in the Museum of Romanticism.
- José Zorrilla (1817-1893), Spanish poet and playwright, famous for his Don Juan Tenorio , as well as other legends and popular theatrical pieces.
- Gustave Doré (1832-1883), French painter, sculptor and illustrator, considered one of the greatest illustrators of the 19th century, for his representations of famous works of literature such as Don Quixote, the Divine Comedy or the Bible. He also dedicated part of his work to myths and traditional legends, as well as pictures of customs.
- Rafael María Baralt (1810-1860), Venezuelan politician, historian, journalist and poet, whose poetry focused on values locals, extolling heroes of independence and heroic battles, as well as landscapes and everyday scenes from Venezuela and Spain itself.
- José María Vergara y Vergara (1831-1872), Colombian writer, journalist and historian who participated in the creation of numerous literary newspapers, in which he disseminated the work of numerous European and Colombian folkloric authors, such as that of the famous novelist Jorge Isaacs.
- José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827), known as “the Mexican thinker”, was a Mexican novelist famous for his work The Periquillo Sarmiento . He was also a student of the politics, literature, linguistics and historiography, in whose literary work the dialect of the time: the jargon student, doctor, slum, etc.