Spring Courses 2003
This course traces the development of Portuguese theater from its first manifestations to the end of the sixteenth-century. In addition to examining the classic works of Gil Vicente, our study will include the work of other dramatists who also contributed to the enrichment of the Peninsular theatrical tradition: the Escola de Gil Vicente (Afonso Álvares, António Ribeiro Chiado and Baltasar Dias) as well as the accomplished Humanist drama of António Ferreira, Francisco Sá de Miranda and Luís de Camões. More than just a review of Gil Vicente's founding contribution to Portuguese theater, this course will further consider Gil Vicente's place in the evolution of the comedia genre, the importance of lyric development in Peninsular drama and the representation of otherness in the context of sixteenth-century performance. Among the works to be read will be Auto da Índia by Gil Vicente, Auto da Barca do Inferno by Gil Vicente, and A Tragicomédia de Dom Duardos.
This course introduces linguistic, cultural and social topics pertinent to the teaching of Spanish at the college level to speakers of other languages and to heritage speakers. The course includes discussion of major topics in psycholinguistics (first and second language acquisition theories) and sociolinguistics (language and identity, sociolinguistic competence), and familiarizes students with current debates over curriculum design in language departments.
This course will focus on the various problems still surrounding the genesis and authorship of the work, its textual tradition and the many interpretations that have been given through the ages. Special attention will be given to the texts, all incomplete, of the extant three manuscripts in order to shed some light on the many ambiguities of the text, to restore, whenever possible, the correct lesson in cases of evident corruption, to explain the process of the material composition and to account for the considerable textual loss in each of the manuscripts. The course will also focus on the intellectual background of the probable author, his readings, his sources, his intended audience and his place within a specific literary tradition that seems to be both Castilian and European in scope. In examining the various interpretations of the work thus far advanced, we will examine very closely the contributions and shortcomings of past and present explanations of the Libro as well as the underlying literary theories on which they are based. Editions to be used in class, as well as relevant bibliography, will be indicated in the syllabus.
This course has as its main purpose the study of some of the most important foundational texts of the national literatures. The texts will be studied not only in relation with the literary movements of the time, but also in reference to their respective political and social contexts. Moreover, we will consider how they represent the concepts of race, class, and gender establishing the pertinent differences among them. Main texts will be El matadero by Esteban Echeverría; Facundo by Domingo F. Sarmiento; "La novia del muerto", "La hija del mazorquero" by Juana Manuela Gorriti; Tradiciones peruanas by Ricardo Palma; Sin rumbo by Eugenio Cambaceres; Aves sin nido by Clorinda Matto de Turner; and Blanca Sol by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera.
In their chapter on Latin American modernismo, literary histories and manuals often focus on a series of topics: gilded interiors, exquisite courtesans, an obsessive preoccupation with the self, the influence of French Symbolism and Parnassianism, an indifference to the political and cultural realities of the home front. In this well-known narrative, brilliantly distilled in Darío's Yo soy aquel, modernismo redeems itself in a rejection of “art for art's sake,” an embrace of teleological anxiety and a preoccupation for Latin America's problems. In this course, we will consider some of the sources of this version of modernismo, along with the complex ways that modernista texts in fact overstep familiar thematic boundaries. Modernismo may then be reconsidered as what Octavio Paz has called a search, in the ruins of modernity, for a “poetics of analogy, which consists in conceiving of literary creation as translation.” Among the authors read will be Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, J.K. Huysmans, José Martí, José E. Rodó, J.A. Silva.
This course studies the Spanish spoken in the American continent. It includes an introduction to the history of these varieties and discusses topics such as the “origins” of American Spanish, the Spanish-based Creole hypothesis, the influence of Native American and African languages, the Spanish- American lexicon, and the salient features of social and regional varieties. Discussion of these topics will be informed by sociolinguistic approaches to language history and dialectology, by dialect-contact and language-contact studies, and by issues in Spain and Latin America's cultural and political history.
In this course we will concentrate on the Spanish novel of the post-Franco period, that is to say, from 1975 to the present day. We will attempt to investigate the question of how much a literary corpus, or many literary corpuses contained within a given political and social space, can reflect the changes that have taken place in a given moment in that space. The underlying reason for this investigation is the essential change that took place in the Spanish nation after the death of Francisco Franco in November, 1975. From that moment on, the country became democratic and was divided into autonomous regions. Several cultural phenomena appeared that could be understood as representative of the New Spain, a new nation in a certain sense. With this objective in mind, we will read essays that refer to the transition to democracy (for example, those of the historian Juan Pablo Fusi, or the novelist and columnist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán) and other, more theoretical essays that deal with the general relationship between literature and the formation of nations (such as the essays of Homi Bhabha and other cultural and postcolonial critics). We will include works that represent those autonomous regions that are deemed most important, due to their social and linguistic differences. We will also attempt to evaluate the importance of feminist writing and that of the most recent generations of novelists. Texts to be read include La isla de Maians, by Monzó; El mismo mar de todos los veranos, by Tusquets; Obabakoak (selected stories), by Atxaga; selected stories, by Rivas; selected stories, by Ferrín; Beatus ille, by Muñoz Molina; Historias del Kronen, by Mañas; Amor curiosidad, prozac y dudas, by Etxeverría.
The second of these seminars that our Program offers in conjunction with the Hispanic Society
of America, and with support from the Fundación Duques de Soria and the Junta de Castilla y
León is conceived as an introduction to the study and editing of Hispanic Early Modern
texts (sixteenth and seventeenth century). Designed to provide students with the skills necessary
to make use of manuscripts and early printed texts in their research, the practical component of the
course will offer a basic preparation in paleography and will focus on identifying and transcribing
the various scripts and printed texts. The course will also address the transcription of texts into
machine-readable format. The theoretical component will be covered by four guest lecturers who
will deal with specific problems encountered in the editing of different early modern genres,
drama, poetry, and fiction. The course will be taught by Dr. John O'Neill, Curator of Manuscripts
and Rare Books at the Hispanic Society of America and the following guest lecturers: Prof. Isabel
Pérez Cuenca (Universidad San Pablo CEU-Madrid), Prof. Gonzalo Pontón
(Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona), Prof. Isaías Lerner (Graduate Center),
Prof. Alfonso Rey (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela), Patrick Lenaghan (Curator of
Iconography, Hispanic Society of America) and Prof. Javier San José Lera (Universidad de Salamanca).
After their divorce in Greece, the relationship between poetry and philosophy became again a main concern with the early Romantics. In a Hispanic context throughout the 20th century this concern has been echoed by a group of thinkers whose most representative works will be analyzed in this course: Antonio Machado's Juan de Mairena, Poetry and Philosophy and Man and the Divine by María Zambrano, as well as the "philosophical" poetry of Roberto Juarroz, gathered under the title Poesía vertical.
This course will analyze the impact, within the traditional genres of poetry, narrative and theater, of the new languages derived from the flourishing and expansion of Spanish American women's voices during the second half of the Twentieth Century. It will integrate theoretical-methodological reflection with a critical practice. The discussions will revolve around the following focal points:
Interdisciplinary Concentration in Translation
The first assumption of this course is that translation is something one learns by doing. Students will
translate weekly exercises and develop individual portfolios, including a number of short texts or excerpts
and one original translation of a work at least 25 pages in length. Of course, one also learns by studiying
others' translations. We will make extensive use of Prospero's Mirror, a
bilingual anthology of 16 stories by Latin American authors, given in the original and in translation–each
by a different translator, each preceded by a brief translator's introduction. We will translate fiction and
non-fiction prose, exploring differences in style and how to recreate them in another language, as well as
the tension between information and expression. Various models of "accuracy" will be examined, not in
order to adopt one over another, but rather to see how different ways of thinking about what makes a "good"
translation might apply to different texts, or to the same text in different contexts. We will also consider the
significance of translation as a cultural practice, and address theoretical questions concerning linguistic
equivalence, the limits of translatability, and the wavering line separating semantic and cultural difference.
Nonetheless, theoretical discussion will never be an end in itself, but will instead be focused on the
applicability of theories to specific problems of translation. As its name implies, this course is first
and foremost practical in its orientation. Simply put, the goal is for the students who take it to be
better translators at the end of the semester than they were at the beginning. |
PORT 70600 - Gil Vicente and Peninsular Theatre: GC, Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits,
Prof. Garay, [55391]
