Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Arts and Humanities

Television Advertising Dynamics

Television advertising features great price dynamics, with prices renewed frequently and negotiation playing a crucial role. It's a highly competitive market with a variety of formats:

• Conventional spot (usually 20 seconds, calculated in multiples of 5)
• Trading block
• Sponsorship (funding a program in exchange for advertising)
• Static events
• Product placement (insertion of a brand, product, or service within program content)
• Telepromotions
• References
• Overlays (home shopping)
• Bartering (exchange of advertising programs)
• Interactive advertising

Prices are published together with the program grid. Commercials are typically set to 20 seconds (price measured per second, with surcharges applied by the chain), though published rates... Continue reading "Television Advertising & Media Planning Essentials" »

Jorge Manrique's Coplas a la Muerte de su Padre

Jorge Manrique's fame stems from his verses on the death of his father, composed after Don Rodrigo's passing in 1476 and published in Seville in 1494. This elegy belongs to the medieval tradition of Christian asceticism: against the worldliness of life, it calls for the acceptance of death as a transition to eternal life. However, the underlying concept suggests a prelude to the Renaissance conception of the following century: besides earthly life and eternal life, it refers to the life of fame, the enduring presence in this world by virtue of an exemplary life that remains in living memory.

In terms of style, characterized by the avoidance of any rhetorical excess or scholarly display, Manrique... Continue reading "Analysis of Manrique's Coplas and Garcilaso's Poetry" »

The Evolution of 19th-Century Literature: Realism to Naturalism

In the final decades of the 19th century, Realism evolved into Naturalism, a movement strongly influenced by the French author Émile Zola. Naturalism's tenets led to an extreme form of realism, proposing the application of scientific principles to literature. For Zola, individuals are a product of genetic inheritance and social circumstances: family and environment condition the individual, determining their very being. In works like Thérèse Raquin and The Proprietress, Zola aimed to expose the most sordid aspects of reality. Spanish writers of the time (Emilia Pardo Bazán, Benito Pérez Galdós, Clarín, and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez) rejected Zola's genetic determinism but incorporated... Continue reading "Literary Evolution: Realism to Naturalism in the 19th Century" »

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and its aftermath in the 1940s brought profound upheaval to all aspects of Spanish life. In the realm of literature, censorship and the country's isolation closed its borders to European literary currents. The novel emerged as the chosen genre for authors of this period, often seeking to restore realism.

The Postwar Novel: Restoring Realism and Tremendismo

Works from this era, while sometimes lacking the innovations of the 19th-century novel in terms of themes or traditional techniques, nonetheless achieved significant quality. Authors like José María Gironella, though perhaps not aesthetically groundbreaking, adopted an existential and despairing tone, reflecting the "unknown moment" of the time. Many felt... Continue reading "The Spanish Novel in Postwar Spain: Currents & Authors" »

Antonio Machado: Themes of Anxiety and Spain

Antonio Machado's poetry is characterized by a simple, anti-rhetorical style, primarily exploring themes of anxiety, melancholy, and the socio-political situation of Spain.

Education and Influences

Machado studied at the Free Institution of Teaching, a prominent educational movement in Spain inspired by Krausismo. This institution played a crucial role in educational reform by championing academic freedom and rejecting religious, political, or moral dogma in its teaching methods.

Three Phases of Work

Machado's work can be divided into three distinct phases:

• Solitudes (later extended to Galleries and Other Poems): This early phase exhibits Symbolist influences, employing poetic language and a subjective

Joan Francesc Mira: Essays on Identity and Nation

Joan Francesc Mira is a prolific author of essays. His essays are generally based on everyday life stories, aimed at the common reader, and written in a non-specialized or academic, but rather literary, language. Mira aims to make the reader understand, through conversation, that our civilization is ending and a new one is beginning.

In his works on political debate, Mira addresses crucial issues such as:

• Nationalism
• The relationship between culture and power
• The creation and evolution of identities and symbols that conform society
• The importance of language in creating collective consciousness
• The ability to manipulate these elements for specific interests

The author demonstrates his commitment to... Continue reading "Literary Perspectives: Joan Francesc Mira and Modern Playwriting" »

Synchronization and Asynchronization in Audiovisual Media

The simultaneous presence of images and sounds can produce asynchronization, a poor combination. This involves contradictory relationships between expressive systems. Therefore, we seek an asynchronous or synchronous reinforcement and expressive interaction.

Audiovisual Editing

Editing integrates and provides coherence and unity to the various expressive components: visual, aural, and written, both simultaneously and in succession. It is what constructs the definitive account of the facts and produces the meaning, the semantic value.

Theory of Double Articulation

This refers to the linkages between images and words. Two quite opposite models of developing television information have emerged:... Continue reading "Synchronization in Audiovisual Media: Editing and Information" »

Understanding Advertising

Advertising is a genre with a commercial purpose, aiming to persuade society to consume a product. It is also used for solidarity campaigns, such as accident or traffic prevention, to promote an idea or raise societal awareness of direct or indirect problems. These are called institutional advertising. This text describes advertising exposure and its predominant arguments.

The Communication Process in Advertising

Advertising is a complete communicative process where a transmitter directs messages to a receiver group. This communication process is unilateral, meaning there is no exchange of views between the sender and recipients.

• The channel can vary depending on the mode of transmission.
• The codes are: linguistic and non-

Literary and Linguistic Concepts

Synonyms are terms that have the same or very similar meaning and therefore can be exchanged in certain phrases. Synonyms must belong to the same grammatical category. Antonyms are those terms that have opposite or contrary meanings. They also belong to the same grammatical category.

Understanding News Reporting

A news story is the account of a current event of interest for readers. For media content to be comprehensive and effective, it must answer the following questions:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• How?
• Why?

Lexical Fields in Language

A lexical field is formed by all those words that refer to the same subject or idea. It is also known as an ideological field. Dictionaries that group words by their meaning are called lexical... Continue reading "Literary Concepts & Linguistic Terms: Picaresque Novel and Prose" »

Poesía Barroca del Siglo XVII

La poesía barroca potencia ciertos rasgos de la lírica renacentista, pero también rompe muchos moldes de la literatura clasicista anterior. En el siglo XVII, la poesía barroca alcanza un momento brillante en la historia literaria española. La métrica y las estrofas italianas coexisten con versos y formas líricas castellanas. Se revitalizan formas populares y abundan las composiciones líricas con métrica castellana. Los temas cultos son diversos y se adaptan a la nueva concepción de la época. La variedad temática es grande.

Temas Principales en la Poesía Barroca

• Poesía amorosa: Sobrevive el legado del petrarquismo.
• Poesía de carácter metafísico: Trata temas como la vida retirada.
• Poesía religiosa: