Span 304: Introduction to Hispanic Literature
Conducted in Spanish, the course introduces the principles of literary analysis, based on reading and discussion of Hispanic literary texts. Includes fiction, drama, essay, and poetry from Spain and Spanish America.
This class was taught by Dr. Maria Zielina. As could be expected, this class involved a lot of reading and analyzing classic literary works from Latin American and Carribean countries. We studied the poems and stories of Latin America's most famous authors/poets such as Pablo Neruda, Jose Martí, Rubén Darío and Jorge Luís Borges, among others. Many of these authors were educated in Spain. As such, their style had many similarities with Spanish writers, but content of their work reflected the realities of life in the Latin American country in which they lived. In the 19th century, Rubén Darío introduced a new style of Latin American poetry that came to known as "modernismo". This was the basis of future Latin American literary works. We also learned about the subsequent literary styles used by Latin American authors such as "El Renacimiento." This class improved my understanding of Latin American culture, issues, and history through the various readings. We also learned about the structure of poems and how to analyze them. It fulfills MLO 1: Language Proficiency, and MLO 3: Literary and Cultural Knowledge.