The Struggle for Modernity:

Survey of Spanish Literature II

(18th-21st C)


 


“T

o write in Madrid is to cry,” Mariano José de Larra wrote in 1837; “To write in Spain is not to cry, but to die,” Luis Cernuda echoed him a hundred years later, “because the flame of inspiration dies smothered in smoke.” Cernuda was writing in the midst of a civil war that ended a short-lived democratic experiment and replaced it, once more, with a military dictator-ship.

 

Progressive Spanish writers and intellectuals have consistently felt out of place in Spain, intensely frustrated with a nation whose traditional power structures for centuries resisted the advent of modernity. A powerful and conservative clergy, an absolutist monarchy and several military dictatorships managed time and again to thwart intellectuals’ desperate attempts at modernization—until finally, in the late 1970s, Spain became a modern democracy.

 


And yet, despite the frustration and repression (or perhaps thanks to it), Spanish intellectuals managed to produce texts, images and, later, films of astounding quality and innovation. This course—a general introduction to modern Spanish literature, art, culture, and history—will study a selection of outstanding Spanish plays, novels, poems, and short stories from the late eighteenth century to the present. Authors studied include García Lorca, Sender, Bécquer, Moratín, Pérez Galdós, Rosalía de Castro, Gómez de Avellaneda, Unamuno, Larra, García Morales, and others.

 

SPRING 2005 – HISP 310 – MWF 1:30-2:20

Sebastiaan Faber, sebastiaan.faber@oberlin.edu, x58189

Conducted in Spanish. Enrollment limit: 20.


Hispanic Studies 310

Spring 2005

The Struggle for Modernity:

Survey of Spanish Literature (18th-20th Century)

 

Instructor

Sebastiaan Faber

404 Peters, x58189

Messages: mailbox in 301 Peters

Office hours: M & W, 2:30-3:30pm, or by appointment

Email: sebastiaan.faber@oberlin.edu

 

Class meeting times

MWF 1:30-2:20pm in 327 Peters

 

Class website: Blackboard <bb.oberlin.edu>

 

Texts:

·         Literatura española: Una antología. Tomo 2: De 1700 hasta la actualidad. Ed. David W. Foster. New York: Garland, 1995.

·         Unamuno, Miguel de. San Manuel Bueno, mártir. Madrid: Anaya.

·         Pérez Galdos, Benito. La novelas de Torquemada. Madrid: Alianza.

·         Texts on ERES, available through Blackboard.

 

Purpose of the course

          The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the main writers and literary movements in Spain from 1700 to the present, and to understand them in their historical context. The readings will also include supplementary non-literary texts, as well as several out-of-class film and documentary viewings.

 

Course requirements:

·         Since a great part of the class time will be taken up by group discussions, attendance to all class sessions is mandatory. Only documented illness or family emergencies constitute excused absenses. Any unexcused absence over 3 will lower the participation grade with 5 % (i.e., half a letter grade).

·         Active class participation and group work.

·         Email and Blackboard will be the preferred medium for announcements, questions, and assignments; students are expected to check their mail every day.

·         Students are expected to have read the assigned texts by the day indicated on the syllabus, and be prepared to discuss the assignments. Typewritten response papers based on the questions provided before most readings are handed in at the beginning of each class.

·         Students are expected to attend several out-of-class film and documentary showings (place and time to be arranged). For those unable to attend the scheduled showings, all videos and DVDs will be placed on reserve in the language lab or the library.

·         Four exams, the last one of which will be given during finals week.

·         Two short midterm papers (of 3 and 5 pages each), as well as a 6/7-page final paper.

 

Evaluation

The final class grade will be broken down as follows:

·         Attendance and participation: 10%

·         Response papers: 15%

·         Four exams, including the final: 40%

·         Two midterm papers: 20%

·         Final paper: 15%

 

Regulations

·         This course is covered by the Oberlin College honor code. For all forms of (suspected) plagiarism this code will be strictly enforced.

·         No late homework will be accepted.

·         Make-ups for quizzes and exams can only be arranged with the professor in person and previous to the test date.

·         Students are expected to be on time and to remain for the entire class. Unexcused tardiness or early departure will be regarded as an absence. The student who misses any part of the class is responsible for acquiring the information missed.