The Ordinary, the Essence of Costumbrismo and Modern Representations

Abstract

The ordinary became part of aesthetic thinking and of the ways of representing reality literary with Modernity, thanks to the development of individualism and national state projects. For the Spanish philological school the ordinary is the custom. As opposed to classical representations and their abstractions, the Romantic Costumbrismo is located in the surrounding, the immediate, the current, the vulgar because everything can be art and be sublime. In the literary workshop, custom synthesizes the genuine and native, and therefore, it singularizes the Nation. Therein lie the keys to the modern novel, and to realistic and naturalistic mimesis.