Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Latin for Baccalaureate

T.S. Eliot's Influence on Literary Criticism

T.S. Eliot was an influential figure in literature. While the literary canon naturally changes with society, Eliot managed single-handedly to modify the canon of English literature through his criticism.

Revitalizing and Reshaping the Canon

He revitalized whole periods of English literature that were almost forgotten, including:

• The Jacobean drama
• Metaphysical poets
• John Dryden
• The poetry of Dante
• Symbolist poetry

However, he also criticized Romantic poetry, managing to impose a dislike for it because he felt it descended into sentimentalism.

Eliot's Critical Concepts

He introduced a series of critical concepts that have exerted an enormous influence on how criticism was conducted in the 20th century. For Eliot,...

Matthew Arnold: Poetry as Criticism of Life

We should conceive of it [poetry] as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it...

But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of excellence. We must accustom ourselves

The Baroque Period

The Baroque era is characterized by melancholy, disappointment, and a contempt for earthly things. It is highly ornate, complex, and filled with intricate ornamentation. During this time, scientific progress stagnated, making way for a resurgence of superstition and religious power.

Baroque Features

• Contrast: A tension between the attitude of disillusionment with life and a desire for worldly enjoyments.
• Aesthetic Imbalance: A taste for inordinate exaggeration and difficult language used to avoid censorship.
• Creative Originality: A focus on personal ingenuity and the artist's unique vision.
• Excess: A general tendency toward exaggeration and stark contrasts.

The central theme of the Baroque is disappointment.

Literary Trends

• Culteranismo:

Lope de Vega set aside classical rules for theater and introduced his own innovations. The most prominent of these was breaking the rule of the three unities. These unities dictated that:

• Time: Classical theater works could not be developed within more than a day. Lope wanted to break this rule and have works last several years.
• Place: The work was developed in one place. Baroque theater puts it in different places.
• Action: The work was to have a single action so the audience's attention did not deviate from the main subject. This was generally respected in Baroque theater.

Drama is a tragedy because it is mixed with the comic, reflecting real life where the tragic and comic always mix. Baroque theater is divided into three acts instead of the...

17th Century Poetry and Prose

1. Conceptismo and Culteranismo

Conceptismo and Culteranismo are underlied by a deep vital skepticism that causes a flight in two different directions. Both strands break the balance of the Renaissance and attend to Baroque literary artifice and difficulty.

• Culteranismo: Represented by Luis de Góngora, it seeks to create a literate poetic language itself. It tends to formal beauty, brilliance of color, and sensory experience. It achieves this through the careful development of language and the abundance of resources (bold metaphors, hyperbaton, etc.).
• Conceptismo: Represented by Francisco de Quevedo, it tends to be concise and expressively dense, and to find wit and ingenuity. It uses ellipsis, paradoxes, word games,

The Origins of the Latin American Boom

Three factors converged in the 1960s to spark the Latin American literary boom. First, painting, poetry, and novels had cultivated a public awareness and an avid readership. Second, the political left gained significant strength across many countries. Third, European publishers began promoting Latin American works to satisfy public interest in the region's social changes following the Cuban Revolution.

Ernesto Sabato: The Intellectual Novelist

Ernesto Sabato (Argentina, 1911–2011) began his career as a scientist before dedicating his life to literature. Despite writing only three novels, he secured a unique place in history as an "intellectual novelist" known for the rigor of his work and the density of...

Structure and Narrative Design

The novel is divided into six unnumbered and untitled chapters. The first and last chapters depict the end of the story when the characters are elderly. The four central chapters utilize an extended time shift backwards (analepsis), recounting the young love of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, who initially rejects him, leading to a wait of over half a century during her marriage to Juvenal Urbino. This creates a non-linear, temporal narrative structure where character arcs are deeply intertwined.

The Three Dimensions of Love

The novel is organized around three distinct types of love and decisive journeys:

• Crazy Love: The romantic obsession of young Florentino for Fermina, interrupted by a forced trip intended to

Location and Historical Context

The Imperial Era was the most splendid period of Roman civilization, when it reached its maximum territorial expansion around the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum. Roman society was based on a slave production system, mainly utilizing prisoners of war. The large number of Roman slaves enabled great agricultural production, crafts, trade, and the construction of monumental architectural and engineering works. Without this system, building such extensive structures would have been unthinkable. Those who benefited from this system were the Roman citizens, divided into two groups: the patricians, who formed the ruling class, and the plebeians, who did not possess all the rights and privileges. Trade, much like with...