Text analysis in Spanish [ LROM2840 ]

Notions of hermeneutical tools for poetical analysis. B2 level in Spanish.

This course will offer students an opportunity to analyze Spanish contemporary fiction in a historical framework. This class will first contextualize the cultural phenomenon of the memory of the civil war and then examine several narrative texts : Réquiem por un campesino español (Sénder), Señas de identidad (Goytisolo), 'La lengua de las mariposas' (Rivas), El jinete polaco (Muñoz Molina). Students will prepare readings and questions prior to class time to encourage discussion. This course also includes references to cinematic artistic productions.

Students will have to produce an analysis that demonstrates their familiarity with the issues raised by the course (the topic of the collective memory of Spanish civil war), and with the poetics through which those issues are expressed

Essay

The course consists of a careful and rigorous analysis of the major poems of John of the Cross on the basis of philological, historical and literary research.

The course will consist of an in-depth study of the poetry (mostly the Cántico espiritual) of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Spanish poet and mystic of the sixteenth century. After a brief historical and literary contextualization, his poetry will be considered under three main headings:
1) a textual and philological analysis,
2) a hermeneutic approach that questions the relationship between contemporary literary criticism and mystical poetry,
3) an analysis of translations that puts into perspective the history of the reception of the text.

- San Juan de la Cruz. Poesía, ed. de Domingo YNDURAIN, Madrid, Cátedra, 1995 (9a ed.), col. "Letras hispánicas".

- Cántico espiritual y poesía completa, San Juan de la Cruz; edición, prólogo y notas de Paola Elia y María Jesús Mancho; con un estudio preliminar de Domingo Ynduráin, Barcelona, Crítica, 2002.

- Articles available at the DUC

Teaching material : Secondary literature linked to the topic of the course. Reading of the selected literary works and of critical studies.