Spring Courses 2002
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, rhetorical 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 focus on a few major dramatists and some of the works that best exemplify the main trends in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age. After a brief overview of sixteenth-century dramatic experimentation as found in court theatre, university plays and religious representations, we will examine the commercialization of dramatic performance, the construction of public playhouses and the emergence of the nueva comedia, as defined by Lope de Vega, which will become the dominant form of dramatic representation. Besides analyzing the dramatic techniques, the peculiar elements and the main features that make up this new genre, attention will be paid to recurrent motifs, aesthetic and popular taste, ideological representation of noble and rural characters in their public and private behavior, passion and morality, power and justice, socio-economic and religious issues as well as ethical and philosophical problems. Texts to be analyzed include: Cervantes', La destruición de Numancia; Lope de Vega's, El caballero de Olmedo and Peribañez y el comendador de Ocaña; Calderón's, La vida es sueño and El alcalde de Zalamea; Tirso de Molina's, El burlador de Sevilla and Alarcón's, La verdad sospechosa.
The Modernista Movement in Brazilian Letters is a survey of the revolutionary style and thematic shifts in Brazilian literature during the period 1922-1945. Although the movement is said to begin in 1922 with the Semana de Arte Moderna, we will take a close look at its antecedents in the decadent phase of the late XIX century as well as its influence in the period after 1945. Among the authors read will be Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Ronald de Carvalho, Graciliano Ramos, Jorge Amado, Raquel de Queirós, Nelson Rodrigues, A. Coutinho and M. Calinescu.
Although the scope of this course covers from 1936 to 2001, this semester will be dedicated to what has traditionally been termed the Spanish Post-War novel, which would best be defined as beginning at the end of the Civil War (1939) and reaching its conclusion at the time of the transition to democracy, which begins towards the end of Franco's life (he died in 1975). Seven texts will be studied in the course of the semester. They will be studied not just as independent texts, but also as manifestations of a distinct cultural moment in Spanish history. Thus the course is designed to develop a growing debate over the different methods with which literary theory and criticism have approached this particular period. Texts to be studied include Cela, La familia de Pascual Duarte; Aldecoa, Cuentos; López Pacheco, Central eléctrica; Martín-Santos, Tiempo de silencio; Rodoreda, La plaza del diamante; Marsé, La oscura historia de la prima Montse; and Goytisolo, La reivindicación del Conde don Julián.
This course will start with an overview of the major poetic languages of the period extending approximately from 1900 to 1950. A number of theoretical issues to be addressed are, the characteristics of lyric poetry as genre; the conflictive relation between lyric poetry and fictional discourse; the possibility of reintroducing history, politics and biography into the interpretation of poetry; and the constitution of a contemporary Spanish American canon. It is in this context of critical debate that special attention will be paid to two "master works": César Vallejo's Trilce and Pablo Neruda's Residencia en la tierra. In the second part of the course we will deal with the emergence and development of an alternative lyric canon built by female voices. Among the women authors to be studied will be Delmira Agustini, Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarbourou, Julia de Burgos, and Dulce María Loynaz.
The seminar will explore synchronic issues in the study of Spanish that have been approached through the quantitative paradigm of variationist sociolinguistics. Preparatory readings will include papers in variationism that do not necessarily use Spanish data. Classes will be conducted in English. Most readings will be in English, some in Spanish. Written work and class discussion will be in the language chosen by the student.
This course will focus on some of the recent trends in essay writing, pointing at the links between new and old concerns, while analyzing the changes experienced by the genre. We will follow, through a selection of representative texts, the authors' ideas about issues such as: 1) Transculturation, heterogeneity and hybridism, which are concepts that reach beyond the previous notions of europeism, indigenism and mestizo culture. 2) Scientific and technological development, globalization, and their impact on society and culture, with a critical view of the old concepts of civilization, progress, and modernity, and of recent theories about post-modernity. 3) Women's changing roles, and their views on contemporary issues, within an expanded field of feminist concerns. Some of the essay writers that will be studied are José Lezama Lima, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Ernesto Sábato, Octavio Paz, Angel Rama, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Antonio Cornejo Polar, Juan José Sebreli, Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsiváis and Beatriz Sarlo.
Literary history, a great product of nineteenth century scholarship, is recapturing the imagination of new generations of literary scholars. As a result of this current historicist turn new topics have emerged: the uses of literary history in "new" societies, the problem of establishing the foundation-stone for national literary histories, the question of literary taxonomies as they relate to ideological conditions and institutional mediations, and the dynamics of literary change and of the historical pressures that shape the literary systems. The seminar will relate the history of literary writing and reading to the history of social, cultural and economic activities. Within this framework, literature will be presented as an imaginative appropriation of the world, as a producer as well as a product of culture. The notion of literature as a historically specific system within a network of social discourses will be one of the underlying ideas of the course, which will try to reflect also on some particular issues: evidence, anachronism, the dialectic of texts and contexts, national particularism, the construction of social identities, collective memory, and gender paradigms.
SPAN 89900 - Independent Literary Research
SPAN 90000 - Dissertation Supervision See Also:
LING 75400 - Bilingualism
LING 79100 - The Semantics of Imaginative Discourse CL 78200 - Studies in Literary Periods: Metaphors, Allegories and Myths of the Baroque Imaginary: GC, Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [50426] |
SPAN 70300 - Introduction to the Methods of Research:
GC, Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [50129]