Abstract

Scholars usually search for the origin of Ramon Gomez de la Serna's gregueria in the formal aspects of the texts written by him before the first appearance of the genre in 1912. But the gregueria is also the product of a series of theories on literature that result from Ramon's early vocation as an intellectual. In this dissertation I try to define those theories from the texts he published between 1905 and 1912. ;Ramon's first book, Entrando en fuego , and his articles in La Region Extremena were originally intended to be the first steps in a political career planned by his father. But these plans were soon broken by Ramon's self identification as an independent "intellectual." Under the influence of Nietzsche, Ramon will turn from the criticism of current events to a philosophical affirmation of life--understood as life of the body--and the individual, oppressed by bourgeois society and culture. He will extend these ideas to aesthetics in the book Morbideces , stating that bourgeois society alienates art and literature from life. ;As a writer for Prometeo --a review founded by his father--Ramon will further develop his ideas in "El concepto de la nueva literatura," where he gives the outline of a still non-existing "new literature" based on the incorporation of the irrational aspect of life, which he associates with life itself. However, this theory will have no immediate effect because of Ramon's inability to bring it to fruition. ;His pessimism about the survival of his conception of life in a social context makes Ramon conclude that it can only be preserved in the personal self. Thus, he discovers in El libro mudo that the connection of the inner self with the Universe leads to a mental liberation from society. Freed from any social "logic"--including that of language--the world becomes "absurd" and fragmented into things. As a consequence of that, Ramon establishes in Prometeo's final issue the theory of a "minimal" literary form that shows the absurd side of things, and includes the first greguerias as examples