Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Latin

Celestina: A 1499 Tragicomedy

Publication History

Celestina was published anonymously in 1499 as the Comedy of Calisto and Melibea, consisting of 16 acts. It was reissued a year later with a preliminary text revealing the author's name, Fernando de Rojas. Rojas claimed to have found Act 1 written by an unknown author and continued the work. In 1502, it was printed with new developments and titled Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea. This is the definitive text, later renamed La Celestina.

Genre and Style

Celestina is a dialogue work of considerable length. Some consider it a play, while others believe it is a dialogue novel. Traits such as free treatment of space and time, dramatic scenes, and parallel character design suggest it is more of a novel... Continue reading "Celestina: A 1499 Tragicomedy by Fernando de Rojas" »

Renaissance Spanish Literature

Didactic Prose

Works by authors like Hermanos Valdés explored educational themes common in Renaissance literature.

Miscellaneous

Varied subjects with didactic purposes are seen in works preceding the trial, including those by Juan Huerta de San Juan, Fray Antonio de Guevara, and Melchor de la Cruz.

Historiography

This involves the study of historical writings, their sources, and authors dealing with these matters. Mariana aimed to present...

Lazarillo de Tormes

This 1525 composition, with an unknown author, is an autobiographical novel in letter form. It features a foreword and seven treatises. The first three treatises, and the fourth, focus on Lázaro's personality and social climbing. By the seventh, he achieves... Continue reading "Renaissance Spanish Literature: An Overview" »

Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837)

Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837) lived in exile and possessed a strong, cosmopolitan background. He aimed to improve the country, advocating and disseminating his views through his journalistic articles. Larra's journalistic prose style is straightforward, employing irony, simple vocabulary, and a bitter, pessimistic tone.

Romantic Theater

Romantic theater authors drew inspiration from 17th-century Spanish theater. Key formal features include the use of verse, the replacement of acts with days, and the rejection of the three unities. Thematic aspects often revolved around medieval origins and concepts of honor.

Romantic Heroism

The hero and heroine of romantic drama become symbols of freedom, defying social norms... Continue reading "Mariano José de Larra & Spanish Romantic Drama: Key Aspects" »

Latin Comedy

Latin comedy dramatists, influenced by Greek theater, adapted Greek stories and characters while incorporating Roman themes. Two prominent playwrights, Plautus and Terence, flourished during the third and second centuries BC.

Epic of America

Virgil's Aeneid narrates the mythical founding of Rome, attributing it to Aeneas, a Trojan hero who escapes Troy's destruction by the Greeks and lands in Latium. This epic draws inspiration from Homer. Virgil also contributed to pastoral poetry with his Eclogues and other works that would later be imitated.

Latin Lyric Poetry

Latin lyric poetry during the reign of Emperor Augustus boasts renowned figures like Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Horace achieved his peak with Odes, where everyday life is transformed... Continue reading "Latin and Medieval Literature: Comedies, Epics, and Lyrics" »

Theater

Origins of Latino Theater

The first theatrical performances were very primitive: no written text, these were simply improvised. In some cases, the actors wore fixed masks. In all these representations, music, singing, and gesturing were very important. Livio Andronico arrived in Rome as a prisoner of war, wrote, and staged the first play in the Greek style. The Greek theater, in its two forms, tragedy and comedy, had already produced great works of art. Livio Andronico and his successors wrote their works imitating the Greek theater, translating Greek authors but adding elements such as gesture, more music, and sung parts...

Classification of Dramatic Works

The first and fundamental division is that of tragedy and comedy.

Tragedy

Tragedy... Continue reading "Latino Theater: Origins, Dramatic Works, and Key Authors" »

Spanish Narrative Forms

Behave like courtiers and are characterized by the prominence of castidad. Highlight some femeninos characters. The discourse of the pastoral novel coincides with the adventure story in the beginning in medias res and interpolated stories of pastors.

Dialogue in Pastoral Novels

The dialogue can break in two ways:

• Letters: In every story there is an exchange of letters, but not the basic building block.
• Poems: Sometimes it works like knots of the story; they have events to better understand the history, and sometimes they are just resting in the Celestinesca novel.

Other narrative models develop using the servants of love and a procuress.

The Chivalry Novel

This subgenre saw extraordinary development, following the same narrative... Continue reading "Spanish Narrative Forms and Key Works" »

Juan Ramón Jiménez (JJR): His Onuvense character and melancholic style exemplify a path from modernism to poetic vanguardism. He died in exile and won the Nobel Prize in three stages, beginning in 1956. His poetry includes sentimental, romantic, and intimate pieces, as well as 'Diary of a Newlywed Poet'. As an intellectual, he sought the ultimate maxima and purification of transcendence, reflecting on death, transition, and eternity. Every effort was like that of a silversmith.

The second stage of his generation, the '27 group, shared intellectual concerns, influenced by figures like Salinas, Guillén, and Gerardo Diego, who had contact with JJR. The poetry of popular features unites them with Alberti, Lorca, Cernuda, García Pradovicnte,... Continue reading "Juan Ramón Jiménez: Modernism to Vanguard Poetry" »

Poetry in the Diaspora: Luís Seoane (1910-1979)

Painter, muralist, designer, poet, playwright, Luís Seoane began to excel in his academics in Compostela. He joined the *Federación Universitaria Escolar* in 1933 and settled in Madrid as a labor lawyer. He fled to Portugal and from there embarked for Buenos Aires.

Merits:

• a) Articles published in several Argentine newspapers. He directed and collaborated with several magazines of the local Galician community: *Follas Novas*, the magazine of "Centro Gallego" and *Buenos Aires*, the newspaper *El Correo de Galicia* and *Galicia Literaria*.
• b) Edited several artistic works: 13 prints of the cartoons *Galicia Mártir*, *Atila en Galicia*, *Milicianos*, and *Estampas de la traición*, with Franco's

Spanish Poetry Since 1940

The consequences of the civil war included a break with past trends, the exile of many poets (literature speaks of two groups: inner and exile), censorship preventing poets from expressing themselves freely, and isolation from European literary and artistic movements.

Poetry of Exile

Different cases:

• Antonio Machado died a few days before leaving Spain.
• Poets of the Generation of '14, like Juan Ramón Jiménez.
• Poets from the Generation of '27: some died, like Lorca, others went into exile.

Common topics include the theme of the lost homeland. Their poems evoke struggle, illusions, and a tone of desperation and bitter nostalgia. Spanish evocation of distant lands and the craving to return. The styles are varied (Juan Gil... Continue reading "Spanish Poetry: From Civil War to Modern Avant-Garde" »