Modernismo (Spanish American)

Modernismo was a Spanish-language literary movement, centered chiefly in poetry, that flourished from 1888 to around 1920 across Spanish America and Spain, fusing the formal refinement of French Parnassianism with the suggestive musicality of French Symbolism to create a highly stylized, richly ornamented verse devoted to beauty, exoticism and technical perfection. Founded and led by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, whose 1888 collection Azul... is generally treated as the movement's inaugural text, Modernismo's other major figures included the Cuban poet and essayist Jose Marti, an important precursor, and the Mexican poet Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, whose later work signaled the movement's turn toward a more restrained, post-Modernista style. Modernismo is generally regarded as the first major Spanish-language literary movement to originate in the Americas and influence literary fashion in Spain itself, reversing the previous direction of literary influence across the Atlantic, and its emphasis on formal innovation directly prepared the ground for the region's twentieth-century avant-gardes and, eventually, the Latin American Boom.