Spring Courses 2001
The purpose of this course is to study the methods and techniques developed for the annotation of literary texts from the Middle Ages to our times. Problems to be addressed are, the multicultural and multinational characteristics of the Spanish language; the different approaches to textual annotation that exist--grammatical, rethorical and lexical notes, their nature and scope; historical and cultural elements. The history, characteristics and uses of dictionaries, vocabularies, concordances and grammar books. Among the texts studied will be works by Alfonso X, Herrera, Cervantes, Fernández de Oviedo, Rubén Darío, Pereda, Güiraldes, álvarez Quintero, Arguedas and Cortázar.
This course will start with an overview of the major features of the phonology and grammar of Spanish. We will then move to an in-depth consideration of several aspects of Spanish morphosyntax from a functional perspective, seeking explanation in communication and other extra-systemic factors. Topics will include the order of subject and verb, the choice of object clitic pronouns, variable use of subject pronouns, heavy NP-shifting, and adverbial placement. These phenomena will be studied on the basis of written texts and transcribed conversations.
This course focuses on the historical vision and the narrative techniques that shape the characterization of historical figures in the Spanish American novels published since the nineteen sixties. When considering this novelistic production, we will take into account some of the theoretical and critical studies on biography as fiction, and its relation to history. The "New Historical Novel," cultivated by Spanish American writers during this period, has renewed interest for the past and, in particular, for the men and women whose participation, big or small, in important events is part of documented history. If, on the one hand, novelists restore their complex and imperfect humanity to national heroes as well as to infamous tyrants, they also rescue, on the other hand, marginal figures who had been relegated to oblivion. The texts to be analyzed during the course illustrate the richness and diversity of this novelistic production . They differ in the times and characters chosen, in the perspective from which they recreate the past, and in the narrative resources put to work by the novelist. The authors are: Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Roa Bastos, Gabriel García Márquez, Carmen Boullosa, María Rosa Lojo and Mario Vargas Llosa.
This course will deal with the emergence and development of Renaissance Humanism and with the spread of the new learning and ideas that characterized the cultural life of Castile during the period extending approximately from 1420 to 1550. Beginning with a critical evaluation of the terms 'Humanism' and 'Renaissance', we will examine the economic and social context in which the traditional arts of the Trivium were gradually expanded and transformed into the studia humanitatis, a cycle of disciplines better suited to the needs of the time. In examining the repercussion of humanism in the writings of the period, we shall pay special attention to the rhetorical, literary, historiographical, ethical and philological theories and practices as well as to the social, political and religious concerns of representative humanists. Since Spanish Renaissance humanism is an area of study relatively unexplored, a great deal of emphasis will be placed on research and discussion aimed at generating studies and critical editions of humanistic texts. Texts to be used in this course include: P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought ant its Sources, Eugenio Garin, La revolución intelectual del Renacimiento, Francisco Rico, El sueño del humanismo: de Petrarca a Erasmo, and a selection of works photocopied from Prosistas castellanos del siglo XV, etc. General and specific bibliography will be distributed in class throughout the course.
This course will concentrate essentially on Benito Pérez Galdós' masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87). We will approach the novel in many ways: as a text in itself; as representative of nineteenth-century Spanish and Madrilenian social and political life; most importantly, as a means to understanding the development of realism and naturalism in the Spanish novel. To this end, we will turn to general theory on these movements as well as to the specific criticism that has been produced on Fortunata y Jacinta and the rest of the Galdosian opus. If time permits, we will study other novels by Galdós.
This seminar will try to reach two complementary goals: to single out social-historical factors and theoretical ideals conducive to the building of the Spanish-American short-story canon and to analyze the singularity of some of the most influential canonized styles. Among the authors studied will be Horacio Quiroga (Cuentos de la selva), Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones), Julio Cortázar (Bestiario), Gabriel García Márquez (La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada), Virgilio Piñera (El que vino a salvarme) and Julio Ramón Ribeyro (Silvio en el rosedal)
This course studies relationships between Hispanic poetry and New York City. It examines the double feeling of nostalgia for the country of origin, or "homing", in each poet, and their sensation of cultural openness in a more cosmopolitan space like the city of New York. In this dialectic process some Hispanic poets write about their urban experience, comparing American culture and social life with their own cultural heritage and traditions. Authors may include José Martí, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca, Julia de Burgos, Ernesto Cardenal and José Hierro.
This course is a comparative survey of modernist trends in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literature. Beginning with the post-symbolist reaction to nineteenth century aesthetics, we will review the imaginative and innovative responses to the challenge of poetic transformation that will emerge from different areas of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds. We will observe that the European response to the challenge of modernity finds its counterpart in the Americas, where the new voices of change will help forge distinct national identities through the repudiation of tenacious colonial models. Rather than the discrete--and often confusing--labels that attempt to delimit these cultural movements (Modernismo in the Hispanic tradition vs. Brazilian Modernismo) our focus will address a more comprehensive concept of modernity, one in which controversial notions of "modernism" are placed within a broader context of the process of modernization: a deliberate and sweeping assessment of the modern condition that will lead to the irreverent programs of the "avant-garde" and the intellectual tendencies of our "postmodern" era. In this examination of the Age of Modernity, in both Iberian and Iberoamerican poetic discourse, we will trace not only the development of a cultural consciousness (i.e., Art as a mirror of social equity) but also of the writer's--sometimes schizophrenic--response to the pressures of a new world order (i.e., Art as a mirror of the individual). It is in this context that special emphasis will be given to the categories of gender and (transgressive) sexualities in the formation of new strategies for self-identity. As Elaine Showalter has observed: "During during this period both the words feminism' and homosexuality' first came into use, as New Women and male aesthetes redefined the meanings of femininity and masculinity" (Sexual Anarchy 3). Among the authors studied will be Ruben Darío, Delmira Agustini, Cruz e Sousa, Cecília Meireles, Mário de Andrade, Juan R. Jiménez, Camilo Pessanha, Florbela Espanca, and Fernando Pessoa and the Orfeu generation.
SPAN 89900 - Independent Literary Research
SPAN 90000 - Dissertation Supervision SPAN 78600 - Practicum in Translation GC: Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Vivero, Rm. TBA, [40679]. |
SPAN 70300 - Introduction to Methods of Research:
GC, Wednesday, 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, Rm. TBA, [40077].