Advanced

Prior to enrolling in courses at this language level, students must have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish at their home university in the U.S.

OBJECTIVE

This course has been designed to examine representative and key texts that will allow students to study and discuss the main issues of Argentine culture and literature. These texts should be seen as readings that help students to approach the central issues of XIXth and XXth Century Argentina. After a thorough discussion of the historical, social, and cultural context of these texts, students may choose a topic of their interest. Text information is provided in English and course is conducted in Spanish.

The following texts will be covered in class:

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento: Facundo, Civilization and Barbarism
Facundo, an epic novel; founder of argentine literature
The blending of different techniques that conform the great tradition in Argentine novels

Roberto Arlt: Seven Madmen
Arlt as creator of existentialism before Sartre and introductory of le mal de vivre in the Argentine cultural scenario
Seven Madmen as a literary vision of latent violence in Argentine society and the brutal impact of immigration in the course of the nation.
Seven Madmen anticipating terrorism
Anticipating historic feats (Uriburu’s revolution, Second World War, Spanish Civil War)
Civilization and barbarism mirroring each other

Julio Cortazar: Casa tomada; Axolotl

Jorge Luis Borges: The Garden of Forked Paths; The Library of Babel

Luisa Valenzuela: The Lizard’s Tail
A fiction that deals with identity, violence and history in Argentina, and rings a bell about certain characters in The Seven Madmen and how they would have evolved during the seventies, when in power.

Tomás Eloy Martínez: Santa Evita
Building of the historical subject
History as a literary genre

EVALUATION
Oral Presentation 20%
Class Participation/Attendance 15%
Homework 25%
Final Exam/Essay 40%