Students should have advanced knowledge of 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 siventeenth 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 seventeenth century, the course will focus on poems of the period and its evolutionary lines: through reading, analysis and text commentary, we will explore the three main trends (herencia petrarquista, cultismo and conceptismo), focusing on contents and poetic features of the main authors.
More specifically, the module will explore:
1. The historical and cultural Spanish context of the seventeenth century in Spain
2. Literary overview: topoi and features of baroque Spanish poetry
3. Poetry in Miguel de Cervantes
4. Luis de Góngora
5. Poetry in Lope de Vega
6. Andrés Fernández de Andrada
7. Francisco de Quevedo
8. Juan de Tassis, Conde de Villamediana
9. Francisco de Rioja
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). 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, all of the articles, the work by Blecua, and all of the ppt or pdf files used during lectures will be published on the e-learning platform (Moodle) of the course.