Students should have an advanced knowledge of the Spanish language, in order to understand, interpret and work with complex texts, as well as a basic knowledge of Spanish history, culture and literature.
After completing the module, students will have improved their critical skills: they will have acquired theoretical and methodological skills to analyze and interpret Spanish poems of the sixteenth century, as well as in-depth knowledge of the historical and artistic period, with particular reference to the relationship between texts and their cultural, artistic and linguistic context.
Contents will also be discussed in a teaching perspective, so as to provide opportunities for further analyses.
After a general introduction on the historical, cultural and literary Spanish context of the sixteenth century, the course will focus on poems of the period and their evolutionary lines: through reading, analysis and text commentary, we will explore the main trends (petrarquismo, manierismo, poesía religiosa: ascética y mística), focusing on contents and poetic features of the main authors.
More specifically, the module will explore:
1. the historical-cultural context of the sixteenth century in Spain
2. Literary overview: topoi and features of Spanish Renaissance poetry
3. Juan Boscán
4. Garcilaso de la Vega
5. Fray Luis de León
6. Fernando de Herrera
7. San Juan de la Cruz.
Teaching will take place through lectures, in Spanish, sometimes with the use of ppt or pdf files; the students’ active participation is required, especially in activities that concern textual analysis.
During the course, professors from other Spanish or Italian universities could be invited to give one or two specialized lectures.
The exam consists of an oral exam with open-ended questions (normally three, except in special cases); attending students can choose to take a written exam (three open-ended questions) in the first exam session after the end of the course. In any case the exam will be in Spanish and it will test the contents of the entire syllabus of the module.
The score (./30) will depend on:
- Knowledge of the historical, cultural and literary context, as well as of specific authors;
- Interpretation skills in reading poems;
- Proper use of theoretical texts as a support for general interpretation in a critical perspective;
- Communicative competence in Spanish (coherence, cohesion, clarity, accuracy, propriety and effective style ).
TAKE NOTE: The anthology, the works of San Juan de la Cruz and Blecua, articles and ppt or pdf files used during lectures will be published on the e-learning platform (Moodle) of the course.