Spring Courses 2005

Port 70900 - Camões and the Portuguese Renaissance: GC, Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Professor Garay, [66055]

This course will present a brief overview of medieval literary traditions in Portuguese literature as background for a more general survey of lyric expression in Renaissance Portugal (e.g., "cantigas de amigo" and the "medida velha" lyrics). We will also study the literary and ideological influence of Luís Vaz de Camões' epic design in the articulation of modern forms of nationhood. The course requires a final paper in MLA style (15 pages minimum), an oral presentation on the same designated topic (all class and written work is accepted in Portuguese, English, Spanish or French). Although focusing on the Portuguese texts, we will also compare these with translations into English, Spanish and French. In addition to some critical readings placed in the GC Mina Rees Library, we will use "Vida e Obra De Luís de Camões" (Porto Editora: 1996), a digital (CD-ROM) version that includes not only all of Camões' work (written in Portuguese as well as Spanish) but also other pertinent information (critical studies, iconography, music, chronologies, etc.), as well as convenient research features (dictionary, search/find, clipboard, printing, etc.).

SPAN 71300 - La Celestina: GC, Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Professor Di Camillo, [66056]

This course is designed as a collective effort aimed at examining major textual problems of La Celestina. It deals primarily with questions relating to the early stages of the textual tradition of the Comedia in its manuscript and printed form: from the manuscript fragment to the early versions in 16 acts to the Tragicomedia in 21 acts. Focusing on the most significant additions, interpolations and substitutions we will consider the role that printers, correctors, booksellers and the reading public played in the evolution of this most puzzling text. Attention will also be paid to the genesis of the work and to the problem of multiple authorship, exploring, at the same time, some of the ramifications implicit in these issues. Through a close analysis of the variants and of the nature of the errors, we will review the stemmas already proposed and try to restore, whenever possible, the correct reading of the text. As a supplement to the philological praxis of the neo-Lachmannean method that only deals with single textual problems, we will strive to relate the individual lectio to the entire work. To this end, emphasis will be placed on documentary evidence (humanist comedies, letters, treatises) as possible sources for resolving specific textual corruptions and unexplained obscure readings. Text to be used in the course: Fernando de Rojas (y “Antiguo Autor”), La Celestina. Tragicomedia de Calsito y Melibea. Edición y estudio de Francisco J. Lobera y Guillermp Serés, Paloma Díaz-Mas, Carlos Mota e Íñigo Ruiz Arzálluz, y Francisco Rico, Barcelona: Crítica, 2000. Supplementary editions to be consulted in class.

SPAN 72300 - Don Quijote: GC, Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Professor Lerner, [66057]

Textual Problems, Critical Practices and the Modern Reception of the Cervantine Novel: This course will focus on the transmission of the text of Cervantes' Don Quijote in the seventeenth century and in the twentieth century. The question of the relationship between the first and the second parts of the novel will be also examined, as well as the most important semantic and ideological aspects of the text. To study problems of annotation, several modern editions will be analyzed, among them, the best known ones of M. de Riquer, J.J. Allen, L. Murillo, J.B. Avalle-Arce, V. Gaos, F. Sevilla-A. Rey Hazas and Francisco Rico. Critical interpretations of the Quijote will be also considered so as to recast the history of its reception in the twentieth century.

SPAN 76700 - Spanish American Novel Since 1960: GC, Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Professor Filer, [21699]

This course will focus on the fictionalization of History in the Spanish American novels during the second half of the Twentieth Century. It will show the important role of literature in creating, during this period, a different collective image of the past. For fiction has become effective in contesting official History, and in presenting critical overviews of the past, sometimes restoring through imagination the faces and voices of those left out of the historical record. The works studied during the course will illustrate, also, the diversity of narrative techniques, the free play of imagination, and the use of parody, irony and humor by which Latin American novelists rewrite and reinterpret their history and culture. The authors included are: Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Abel Posse and Carmen Boullosa.

SPAN 77200 - Contemporary Spanish-American Poetry to 1950: GC, Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Professor Gottlieb, [66059]

This survey course will deal with the major trends in Latin American poetry from posmodernismo until 1950. In addition to close textual readings, we will examine the historical trajectory of the poetry of this period (poesía afroantillana, the avant-garde ismos and the various post avant-garde tendencies), The poets and texts to be studied are on the required reading list: Vicente Huidobro, Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Luis Palés Matos, César Vallejo, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. Additions and bibliography will be indicated in class.

SPAN 80000 - Studies in Spanish Linguistics - Language Policy and Globalization in Latinamerica and Spain: GC, Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 credits, Professor del Valle, [66060]

This seminar discusses the role that language policies play in the production and reproduction of group identities. It focuses on the strategies through which language policies aim at intervening in the configuration of linguistic markets, that is, in the determination of the value assigned to different linguistic practices as well as to the beliefs held by members of a given community. Finally, the seminar hopes to assess the extent to which concepts central to language policy studies - such as power, solidarity, social networks, intergenerational transmission, or strict compartimentalization - are still valid or need to be reformulated in the context offered by the many phenomena associated with globalization. We will approach globalization through the work of García Canclini and Anthony Giddens, and will discuss views of language and community through the theoretical work of authors such as Pierre Bourdieu, Joshua Fishman, James Milroy, Christina Bratt Paulston, Robert Philipson, or Bernard Spolsky, and through studies of language policies designed and/or implemented in a number of specific communities in Latinamerica and Spain.

SPAN 80100 - Seminar: Studies in Spanish Sociolinguistics - Spanish in the U. S.: GC, Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Professor Otheguy, [66061]

The purpose of the seminar is to learn to carry out research on the Spanish used in the US under the paradigm of variationist linguistics and/or that of the sociology of language. The student will organize and carry out a small research project on a variable structure of the Spanish spoken or written in New York or other parts of the US, on attitudes toward this variety, on its social and demographic distribution, on code selection, on maintenance and shift, or on other relevant topic. A second purpose of the course is for the student to become familiar with the salient works of the research literature on US Spanish. The instructor will conduct classes in Spanish. Questions in class, and class dialogue in general, can be in either English or Spanish according to the individual student's preference. Written work can be in English or Spanish. Some readings will be in English and some in Spanish.

SPAN 82200 - Seminar: Spanish Literature of the Baroque: GC, Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Professor Schwartz, [66062]

The Satires of Quevedo: Transmission, Sources and Reception: This seminar will focus on the study of Quevedo's satires in verse and prose, their circulation in manuscript in the early seventeenth century and the history of the first editions. Quevedo's satirical corpus will be also analyzed in relation to its literary models, which encompass Roman satura in hexameters, as practiced by Horace, Persius and Juvenal, and Menippean satire, as developed by Varro and Seneca; Lucian's Greek satires, and their Renaissance recreations in works by Erasmus and Justus Lipsius. They will also be considered from the perspective of genre, and as particular realizations of the aesthetics of wit in the Baroque. Texts to be studied in class will include Quevedo's versions of Menippean satire: Sueños and La Fortuna con seso y la hora de todos, and a selection of satirical poems written in tercets, among them the “Epístola satírica y censoria” dedicated to the Count-Duke of Olivares, sonnets and romances which develop motifs and topoi also present in the prose satires. Editions to be used include those published by Cátedra and Castalia (1993), J.M. Blecua's canonical edition of the poetry and the annotated anthology Un Heráclito cristiano, Canta sola a Lisi y otros poemas. A bibliography of secondary sources will be distributed in class.

SPAN 84000 - Seminar: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature: GC, Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 credits, Professor Sherzer, [66063]

The Nineteenth-Century Novel: the Novel and its Theory: A study of the nineteenth-century Spanish novel. The first part of the semester will be dedicated to nineteenth-century theoretical writings on novel theory. Works by Galdós, Valera, Pardo Bazán, and Clarín will then be introduced. The theoretical material will come from the writings of these authors as well as some of their contemporaries from outside Spain such as James and Zola.

SPAN 87000 - Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature -- Catalan Literature: GC, Th, March 17 (2:00-4:00 p.m.), Fri, March 18 (2:00-6:00 p.m.), Sat, March 19 (10:00 am - 2:00 p.m.), Th, April 14 (2:00-4:00 p.m.), Fri, April 15 (2:00-6:00 p.m.), Sat, April 16 (10:00 - 2:00 p.m.), 2 credits, Professor Bou, [66064]

This seminar will start with a theoretical presentation of the constitution of autobiography in the twentieth century. It will also encompass a review of the extant bibliography on the subject, including the latest research published in Europe and in America. Special attention will receive the study of the most important forms practiced in autobiographical discourses in Catalan literature: memòries i autobiografies, dietaris, epistolaris, libres de viatges, as they materialized in text by the following authors: Josep Pla J.V. Foix, Eugeni d'Ors, Gaziel, Josep M. de Sagarra, Marià Manent, Mercè Rodoreda, Josep Ferrater Mora, Pere Gimferrer.

SPAN 87000 - Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature -- The Theory and Practice of Editing Hispanic Texts II: Manuscript Transmission: GC, Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Dr. O'Neill, [66065]

This course offers a basic introduction to paleography, and will focus on the skills required in the reading, transcribing, and editing of original manuscript material. We will study different scripts from the early medieval to early modern periods, including texts produced in colonial America, as well as consider the different components of manuscripts, e.g. illuminations, bindings etc.

SPAN 87300 - Seminar: Studies in Spanish Literary Criticism: GC, Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Professor Reisz, [66066]

This seminar will focus on Borges as canonized author and as canon-builder critic, as creator and analyst of himself and the others, as hyper-conscious writer and wise reader of literature and philosophy, as revered author of fictions and promoter (or severe judge) of other authors. Special attention will be devoted to his short notes as well as his reviews of real or imaginary books; to his prologs and anthologies; to his epigraphs and even to the footnotes that add most times ironic or ludicrous tones to his fictions. Based on these materials we will search for clues of Borges's aesthetic and ideological preferences and of the fundamentals of his own writing. We will try to re/construct a Borgesian ars poetica (as well as a Borgesian ars phantastica) to reach a better understanding of Borges's literary ideals, of his work as actualization of those ideals, and of his influence in the constitution of a postmodern canon. Among the books that will be analyzed are the following: Borges, Jorge Luis - Silvina Ocampo - Adolfo Bioy Casares. Antología de la literatura fantástica, and Borges, Jorge Luis. El Aleph, Ficciones, Discusión, Otras inquisiciones, Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos, Textos cautivos.