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.
SPAN 395IP: Introduction to Spanish Literature
This course was taught completely in Spanish at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the University of Granada. In this course, we learned about how the Spanish Language was first written in text. We read the oldest Castilian text in Spanish history, "El cantar de mio cid" by an unknown author. This book was written hundreds of years ago and is known as one of the first texts in the Spanish language. We read the original version of this book and broke it down to understand the difficult text through the first month of the semester. We also read, "Milagros de nuestra señora" by Gonzalo de Berceo which is a book of many short stories on how to be faithful towards the Virgin Mary. This book was completely relevant based on the time it was written in a very Catholic Spain. To better understand these texts we had to learn about the feudal system, hierarchy, and mindset during the 14th century.
This course was one of the most challenging that I took while I was abroad. When we first started reading the texts, I felt like I was reading another language. The older Spanish language is very complex and written in a different style. I was so worried because I could barely understand Shakespeare, how was I going to understand Berceo?! The professor taught very quickly, but he made sure to cover information about how and why things were happening in the texts. The total grade of this course was based on a final exam based on everything that we had learned during the semester and the writing sample that is available below.
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.
SPAN 395IP: Introduction to Spanish Literature
This course was taught completely in Spanish at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the University of Granada. In this course, we learned about how the Spanish Language was first written in text. We read the oldest Castilian text in Spanish history, "El cantar de mio cid" by an unknown author. This book was written hundreds of years ago and is known as one of the first texts in the Spanish language. We read the original version of this book and broke it down to understand the difficult text through the first month of the semester. We also read, "Milagros de nuestra señora" by Gonzalo de Berceo which is a book of many short stories on how to be faithful towards the Virgin Mary. This book was completely relevant based on the time it was written in a very Catholic Spain. To better understand these texts we had to learn about the feudal system, hierarchy, and mindset during the 14th century.
This course was one of the most challenging that I took while I was abroad. When we first started reading the texts, I felt like I was reading another language. The older Spanish language is very complex and written in a different style. I was so worried because I could barely understand Shakespeare, how was I going to understand Berceo?! The professor taught very quickly, but he made sure to cover information about how and why things were happening in the texts. The total grade of this course was based on a final exam based on everything that we had learned during the semester and the writing sample that is available below.