This Unit introduces the student to Spanish and Latin American social, political and cultural history through literature and the arts. The Unit uses literary texts, pop music, film and art as the means to explore and understand some of the most consequential junctures in Spanish and Latin American history. The Unit will cover the following epochs each of which will be studied by means of one canonical literary work or by other artistic forms:
- Imperial Spain: Lazarillo de Tormes and the picaresque novel.
- The Conquest of America: Alvar N煤帽ez Cabeza de Vaca鈥檚 The Shipwrecked Men.
- The Spanish Civil War: Camilo Jos茅 Cela鈥檚 Family of Pascual Duarte.
- Post-Colonial Latin America: Gabriel Garc铆a M谩rquez鈥檚 Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
- Contemporary Spain and Latin America: Pop Music from the 1960s to the present.
- Contemporary Spain and Latin America: Film: Bienvenido Mr Marshall (1952).
- Contemporary Spain and Latin America: Politics, Society, and Art.
NB: some of these topics may change exceptionally depending on staff availability.
Main Reading List
- Cela, Camilo Jos茅 (2023). Family of Pascual Duarte. Dallas: Dalkey Archive Press.
- Garc铆a M谩rquez, Gabriel (2014). Chronicle of a Death Foretold. London: Penguin.
- Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler: Two Spanish Picaresque Novels (2003). London: Penguin.
- N煤帽ez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar (2007). The Shipwrecked Men. London: Penguin.
- Bienvenido Mr Marshall, Accessible with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZ7mqhlCAw
Supplementary Reading List
- Ardila, J. A. Garrido (2015), 鈥極rigins and Definition of the Picaresque Genre鈥�, in J A G Ardila (ed.), The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature. From the Sixteenth Century to the Neopicaresque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-23.
- Ardila, J. A. Garrido (2019), 鈥楾he Literature of Renaissance Spain鈥�, in Hilaire Kallendorf (ed.), A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance. Amsterdam: Renaissance Society of America and Brill. 383-406.
