SPANISH LITERATURE FROM “NOVATORES” TO HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDE

the aim of this course is to provide basic hermeneutic tools in order to allow for a conscious and autonomous critical analysis of the works in the syllabus. Given the premise that each work, no matter in what historical period it is produced, exists as a semiotic object, its reading and interpretation cannot ignore the relations that it entertains, implicitly or explicitly, with the culture and the society of its time (or immediately preceding it), both at a national and a transnational level. In order to grasp such co-relations – as well as to shed light on those textual values that escape a merely aesthetic examination – an interdisciplinary approach is crucial: this means, during the analysis, to make use of narratology, cultural history, philosophy, theories of identity and alterity (especially indebted to gender studies), and, wherever useful, to psychoanalysis.expected learning outcomes (with reference to the Dublin descriptors):

knowledge and comprehension: the student can identify the historical-cultural context, from the 18th century to the first decades of the 20th, in which the literary works and ideas on the program are situated; the student knows a variety of literary genres and can ascribe the works on the program to a particular genre; the student knows the different constitutive elements of a literary work (including rhetorical and stylistic strategies) and can apply this knowledge to conduct a deep textual analysis. 

learning skills: the student is able to identify suitable learning methods and strategies in order to achieve the educational objectives outlined for the course year.

- critical history of Spanish literature: a) from the slavish imitation of hegemonic European literatures to the construction of a “national” literature, 18^th-19^th centuries; b) fin de siècle literature (between the 19th and the 20th century), between catholic-casticismo and avant-garde: the necessity of a critical revision of “generation” as a historical category; c) innovation of the literary genres of drama, novel and poetry in the light of tradition (from 1898 to 1927); d) “high” literature, consumer literature and the reading public at the time of dictatorships (from Primo de Rivera to Francisco Franco);

- texts: with the aim of moving beyond a narrowly and hierarchically understood idea of canonical literary texts, the texts chosen all belong in the margins of the hegemonic biopolitical discourse, negotiating some of its instances in different, at times contradictory, ways. not unlike canonical texts, each of them contributes to sketching out – sometimes belatedly, at other times unexpectedly in advance – the history of (not only) the aesthetic-literary ideas developing in Spain across the centuries after the Siglo de Oro. Rather than in their conversation with contemporary literature, the most valuable merit of such literary output lies in their shared, textually performed refusal of both stifling and acritical views of notions such as “nationality”/“hispanicity” as well as in reclaiming through their dissident discourse the authoritative agency of peripheral subjects.

Methodological texts

- ♣ Bernardelli, A., La narrazione, Laterza “Alfabeto letterario”, Roma-Bari, 1999 (134 p.);

- ♣ Marchese, A., Dizionario di retorica e stilistica, Mondadori, Milano, 1990 (only the following entries: allegoria; ambiguità; amplificazione; anacoluto; anafora; analessi; analisi; attante; autore; bildungsroman; canon; captatio benevolentiae; carattere; citazione; cliché; codice; comparazione; comunicazione letteraria (paragraph 3 of the entry “comunicazione”); connotazione; contenuto; contesto; corpus; cultura; denotazione; descrizione; destinatario; deus ex machina; dialogo; digressione; disambiguamento; discorso; dispositio; elocutio; eroe; ex abrupto; extratestualità; fabula; figura; flusso di coscienza; fruizione; generi letterari; grado zero; ideologia; incipit; in medias res; intenzionalità; interpretazione; intertestualità; intratestualità; intreccio; inventio; iperbato; iperbole; ipotassi; ironia; isotopia; leitmotiv; letterarietà; letteratura; lettore; locus amoenus; macrotesto; metafora; metonìmia; mise en abìme; mito; monologo; narrativa; narratore; narrazione; norma; novella; opera aperta; orizzonte d’attesa; ossimoro; paratassi; paronomàsia; pastiche; peripezia; personaggio; polisemia; prolessi; prosa; punto di vista; reticenza; retorica; ridondanza; romanzo; simbolo; similitudine; sinèddoche; stile; straniamento; suspense; testo; tópos; trama; weltanschauung; voce).

 

History of Literature

♣ Alvar, C., Mainer J.C., Navarro, R., Breve historia de la literatura española (pp. 431-614).

 

Main texts to read

- Burgos, C. de (Colombine), El artículo 438, La Novela Contemporánea, 1921 (http://www.bibliotecavirtualdeandalucia.es/catalogo/consulta/registro.cmd?id=1039005);

- ♣ Caballero, F. de, La Gaviota, Castalia, Madrid, 1979;

- ♣ Unamuno, M. de, San Manuel bueno, mártir, Castalia, Madrid, 1987;

- ▼Selected excerpts from texts published between the eighteenth- and the twenty centuries.

 

Criticism

A)

- Botteron, J., Cecilia Böhl de Faber antes de Fernán Caballero. La emergencia de una identidad y una voz autoriales, in «Esferas Literarias», 1, 2018, pp. 43-58 (http://www.uco.es/ucopress/ojs/index.php/Esferas/article/view/11449/10410);

- Romero Morales, Y., Derecho al voto y Ley del Divorcio: Obsesiones feministas de doña Carmen de Burgos Seguí, una escritora del siglo de plata español, «Cuadernos del Ateneo», 32, 2014 (http://74.220.219.146/~cuadern3/ateneodelalaguna/ATENEO32/002-derechoalvoto.pdf);

- Villar Ezcurra, A.,  El secreto juego de San Manuel bueno, mártir: la apuesta por el amor y el contento de vivir, in «Pensamiento», 76, 291, 2020, pp. 855-875 (https://revistas.comillas.edu/index.php/pensamiento/article/view/16832/14840).

B)

- ♣ Foucault, M., a) Sorvegliare e punire, Einaudi, Torino, 1993, solo pp. 147-177 (I corpi docili, dal paragrafo “I corpi docili” al paragrafo “L’organizzazione delle genesi” incluso) e pp. 213-247 (Il panoptismo); ♣ b) La volontà di sapere, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2005, solo pp. 9-18 (Noialtri vittoriani) e pp. 19-48 (L’ipotesi repressiva);

- ♣ Lotman, J.M., Il metalinguaggio delle descrizioni tipologiche della cultura, in Lotman, J.M. e Uspenskij, B.A., Tipologia della cultura, Bompiani, Milano, 1995, pp. 145-181.

 

N.B.

a) the texts preceded by the following symbols:

♣ can be found at the Biblioteca delle Scienze dell’antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche;

▼ will be available for download on STUDIUM;

b) for the texts that are downloadable in pdf format, a link has been provided in parenthesis after the title;

c) all the texts that will be provided in class and that are downloadable from the teacher’s website STUDIUM are part of the official syllabus for the exam;

d) attendance to class is advised but not obligatory; however, all students must attend class at least once in order to understand what will be required of them at the oral exam. All classes will be held during the first semester. Those who, for valid reasons, cannot attend class even on a single occasion, will be allowed to listen to an oral exam.

 

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied. For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright). All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.