2011-2012 Academic Year

Spanish Literature (20010)

Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 1^st
Term: 3^rd
Number of ECTS credits: 6
Hours of student dedication: 150
Teaching language or languages: Spanish
Teaching Staff: María Morrás (master classes), Xavier Tubau (master classes and seminars), Begoña Capllonch (seminars) and Ana Casas (seminars).

1. Presentation of the subject

This subject is intended to be an introduction to Spanish Literature from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, following the thread of the attraction and rejection relation between minorities' culture and popular culture. Through the canonical texts belonging to the three great genre spheres (lyric poetry, narrative fiction and theatre), we study the formal and thematic transformations that through time come to constitute literary tradition within the frame of European Literature. There is a double methodological perspective: diachronic as far as the dynamic development of motifs, themes and models is concerned, and of synchronic analysis at the text level (rhetoric and semantic means) and at the social and cultural context level. The goal is, at the same time, to make students familiar with some of the greatest works fundamental to the Spanish literary tradition, and to achieve a good level of interpretative skills, useful for any work from the Golden Age.

2. Competences to be attained

General competences

Specific competences

Instrumental skills 1.      Reading and comprehending skills in formally and semantically complex texts. Identification of information implicit within a text. 2.      Analysis and synthesis skills. 3.      Writing skills in one's own language. 4.      Abstract reasoning and skills in creating conceptual networks around a specific issue. Understanding the interrelation linking Literature, Art, History and Thought. 5.      Information management and processing skills. Interpersonal skills 6.      Knowledge of cultural diversity. 7.      Ethical reflection skills on human behaviour. 8.      Skills in formulating judgements of an aesthetical character. 9.      Being able to get adapted to group work, based on the reasoned confrontation of divergent points of view.

1.      Knowledge of the origins of the Spanish literary tradition from the Golden Age on three areas: high and popular lyric poetry, modern fiction, and theatre as a text and spectacle fusion. 2.      Ability to understand and interpret complex literary texts within their historical, social and cultural contexts. 3.      Ability to analyse the formal structures of the different literary genres. 4.      Ability to recognise the characteristic traits of a classical or canonical literary piece of work and to identify the continuity and innovation elements. 5.      Analytical reading. Ability to establish links within a text and with other contemporary, anterior and posterior texts. 6.      Production skills in the Spanish language

3. Contents

Unit 1 - Introduction to Spanish Literature from the Golden Age

1.1  - Renaissance and humanism

1.2  - Literary norms

1.3  - Baroque and counter-reformation

1.4  Tradition and innovation in the literary system from the Golden Age

Unit 2 - Fiction in the Renaissance 

2.1 - Narrative modalities in the 16^th century

2.1 - The Lazarillo and the picaresque novel

2.1 - The fiction theory in Cervantes: El casamiento engañoso and El coloquio de los perros

Unit 3 - Lyric poetry in the Golden Age

3.1 - Poetry schools from the 16^th and 17^th centuries

3.2 - Renaissance lyric poetry: Garcilaso, San Juan and Fray Luis de León

3.3 - Baroque lyric poetry: Quevedo, Góngora, Lope de Vega

Unit 4 - Arte Nuevo in the Baroque

4.1 - The theatre spectacle in the 17th century

4.2 - Lope's Arte Nuevo and the dramatic norm in the Golden Age

4.3 - Literature and spectacle in the baroque theatre: La vida es sueño, by Calderón de la Barca

 

*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology, and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.