Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Superior

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of 2 upper-division college-level Spanish courses. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Objectives:

Introduce the Northamerican students to knowledge of Spanish literature of the 20th century through a selection of texts that will be the study of reading and commentary of some detail. With the goal of contextualizing this reading, we will approach the principal literary problems as they are established, in their relationship with culture (art, history and thought) from their epoch.

Methodology:

Reading of the texts will be proceeded by a panoramic synthesis of the literary movements and authors, though the weight of the course will fall mostly in the reading and commentary of the chosen works, keeping different critical perspectives in mind. Before reading of each theme, the student will be given a reading guide that will serve as a standard, where the principal aspects that will be discussed in class and should be prepared by students, will be highlighted.

Evaluation:

Class participation, a brief written paper, a partial exam and a final exam.

Program

I. Introduction to the 20th century. Periodization problems.

II. The period at the end of the century. The new literary conscience.

a. Modernism and 1898. The concept of modernism and its aesthetic proposition.

b. Spain and 1898.

c. Aesthetic and ethic of the poetry of Antonio Machado.

Readings: Selection of Poesias by Ruben Dario and Antonio Machado.

III. The beginning of the contemporary epoch. Aesthetic ideas and experimentation of new ideas.

a. The new literary ideas: novecentismo, avant-garde, the generation of 1927.

b. The generation of 1927. The poets of 1927.

c. Experimentation and the theatre: Valle-Inclan.

Readings: Anthology of poetry by the generation of 1927. Luces de bohemia by Ramon del Valle-Inclan.

IV. Postwar

a. Social realism.

b. The new narrative tendencies: Carmilo Jose Cela.

c. Lonliess and poetry. Permanence and innovations: from Damaso Alonso to Jose Hierro.

Readings: Anthology of poetry. The family of Pascual Duarte by C.J. Cela.

V. The new names (1975-1990).

a. Panorama of the present narrative.

Readings: Selection of Short Stories.

Other possible assignments: The canon of Spanish literature: the classics and the perifery, Women and literature, some course in monography about a grand work/author of Spanish literature (Cervantes and Don Quijote, la Celestina, Golden Age, etc.)