La sátira literaria poética en el siglo XIX: Juan Martínez Villergas

Abstract

El presente estudio aborda la sátíra poética de tema literario en el siglo XIX español con el análisis monográfico de un autor.

Entre las razones por las que Villergas podía constituir materia de tesis:el desconocimiento del autor. Personaje polémico, citado en las historias de la literatura, parecía un desconocido. La labor que le reconoce la crítica de su tiempo, ocasional y parcamente, es su actividad como crítico literario y la de ser un hábil versificador de sátira .

Su vinculación con los problemas políticos y sociales de su tiempo, su ideal revolucionario le llevó a hacer la vida imposible al moderantismo secular, y, en consecuencia, su producción literaria, reviste un valioso interes etico e ideológico.

El corpus textual supera las poesias satíricas de crítica lingüística y literaria, Poesías jocosas y satíricas, 1842, y Los siete mil pecados capitales, 1846. Su análisis exigía la observación de las relaciones intertextuales que se manifiestan entre las sátiras en verso y sus obras en prosa: novelas y ensayos de crítica literaria, actividad periodistica.

This dissertation undertakes a thorough examination of the political satire of the nineteenth-century Spanish author Juan Martínez Villergas, with a particular attention to the political and literary context in which his works were produced. The principal aim of this study has been to rescue Villergas from critical oblivion: a polemicist and controversial writer in his own time as well as the author of scathing literary reviews, he scarcely features in the histories and monographs of Spanish literature. If he appears at all is in the guise of literary critic and the author of fine satires in verse: this is the only facet of Juan Martínez Villergas that nineteenth and twentieth century critics have recognised. By delving in different archives and retrieving Villergas’ forgotten writing, this thesis, however, argues that his work is more versatile and thought-provoking than what critics have implied. Most suggestive is Villergas’ biting attack on the conformist and complacent attitude Spanish romantic writers displayed in the midst of so much political corruption and laissez-faire that characterised nineteenth-century Spain.

As this thesis shows, the corpus of this neglected writer cannot be confined to his satirical verses and his pieces of literary criticism, gathered in Poesías jocosas y satíricas (1842) and Los siete mil pecados capitales (1846). Martínez Villergas also wrote fiction and literary journalism. I related aim of this study, therefore, has been to explore intertextual connections between his satirical poetry and his novels, essays and journalism. Such interrelated analysis of different genres has permitted the exploration of the hitherto unacknowledged influence that French romanticism had on Villergas and to reveal the extent to which his writing was committed to the social problems of his day.

Villergas’ critical attitude towards Spanish romantic literature displays his distaste for the traits that marred much of this school in Spain: affectation, verbosity, immorality, plagiarism, compliance with literary institutions, artificiality, proliferation of worthless poets, gratuitous diatribes against the translation of French dramas, endless fascination with the topic of death, abuse of the trope of the nocturnal and of the cliché of the desolate romantic sensibility, and the moralising attitude towards the modern French novel. His works, on the other hand, exhibit his deep appreciation for the French romantic movement, most vividly expressed in his novellas collected in El Cancionero del Pueblo (1844-45) and in his extensive novel Los Misterios de Madrid (1845) as well as in Juicio crítico de los poetas españoles contemporáneos (1854). What he admired most about French novelists, playwrights and poets was their defence of a social humanism, a philosophical stance based on the notions of progress, justice and freedom.

By a thorough examination of the ethic and aesthetic preoccupations embedded in Villergas’ writing, this dissertation has endeavoured to throw light on the reasons that triggered his anti-romantic invectives and his satires against leading literary figures of his time. One of the conclusions of the thesis is that Villergas’ negative view of Spanish romanticism was brought about by the limited ability that, in his view, Spanish romantic writers had displayed in adapting and endorsing the essence of the philosophy of liberalism that inspired this international movement.