Enlightment and Romanticism Dialectics in El Robinson urbano’s Antonio Muñoz Molina journalistic articles

Abstract

Introduction:The Urban Robinsonappeared in 1984. It was the first work published by Antonio Muñoz Molina. As such, it contains the key elements of the initial work of the author. Those elements are the foundation for his later production. Methodology:This work analyses The Urban Robinsonunder the dialectic between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, which offers a perspective from which to read the years and tensions of the Spanish democratic transition as a historical period, as well as the relations between journalism (exercised in freedom again) and literature. To make this analysis, this article uses a bibliography on journalism and literature, on the one hand, and, on the other, on Enlightenment and Romanticism, as well as on Postmodernism as a post-Romantic period. Discussion:The Urban Robinsonis presented, in the first years of Spanish democracy, as a defense of reason and the Enlightenment project, although it also reports its risks and excesses. Among them, the social control by the State, the market or technology, the devastation of the historical heritage of the cities, the alienation of the individual, the return of superstitions and nationalist folklorism, intellectual snobbery, or the hegemony of the productivist morality. Conclusion:All these are elements typical of the romantic criticism of the Enlightenment, which find in the pages of a local progressive newspaper, in the Granada of the Transition, and Muñoz Molina's pen, a framework of genuine and singular manifestation and expression.