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

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" »

Joanot Martorell: Life, Legacy, and the Birth of a Masterpiece

The Author's Troubled Life

While the exact circumstances surrounding the completion of Tirant lo Blanc remain debated, it is believed that the manuscript, perhaps unfinished at the time of Joanot Martorell's death in 1468, passed into the hands of Martí Joan de Galba, who seemingly completed its revision. Martí Joan de Galba, a friend of Joanot Martorell, may have received the manuscript from the author, perhaps due to Martorell's severe financial difficulties.

Joanot Martorell was born in Gandia, the son of a noble family. Educated as a courtly knight, he read extensively while learning to fight, aspiring to be a perfect gentleman even as the era of chivalry had long entered a crisis.... Continue reading "Joanot Martorell's Life and the Masterpiece Tirant lo Blanc" »

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" »

Remember José Sanchis Sinisterra, author of realist theater; Lauro Olmo, José Rodríguez, and so on. The 1960s saw the overcoming of realism's vanguard due to European theater: theater of the absurd, theater of cruelty. Fernando Arrabal is characterized by elemental scenic design, personality, and naive language. He uses the form of the ceremony. Arrabal's panic theater is characterized by confusion, terror, humor, randomness, and euphoria; incorporating surrealist elements in language. His themes are religion, sexuality, politics, death, and love. It converges on the positive through surrealism, theater of the absurd, and the theater of cruelty. "The Graveyard of Cars" is based on a dying society with hidden characters, doomed to an uncomfortable... Continue reading "Spanish Theater: Realism, Absurdity, and Innovation" »

Poetry in the Postwar Period

• Existential Poetry

  • Themes: Loneliness, anguish, love.
  • Authors: Luis Rosales (religious poetry), Luis Alonso (Sons of Life), Blas Otero (Angel Human Beast).

• Postismo

  • Author: Carlos Edmundo de Ory.
  • Vanguard characteristics: Playfulness, creative freedom.

• Cántico Group

  • Imitated the Generation of '27 (aesthetic perfection).
  • Authors: Pablo García Baena, Ricardo Molina.

Poetry of the 1960s

• Synthesis between existential poetry and social poetry.
• Poetic renewal.
• Authors: Claudio Rodríguez, Jaime Gil de Biedma, José Manuel Caballero Bonald.

Poetry of the Novísimos (Last Things)

• Anthology: Nueve novísimos poetas españoles by José María Castellet.
• Allusions to movies or comic books.
• Authors: Pere Gimferrer, Leopoldo María Panero.

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" »

Key Characteristics

• Formal Renewal: Poets employed a diverse lexicon, ranging from elevated, almost worshipful terms, to colloquialisms and innovative poetic expressions.
• Metrical Renewal: They sought a balance in their poems' metrics, blending traditional forms like the sonnet or romance with the use of blank verse and free verse, rather than complete freedom.
• Varied Themes: Their thematic scope was broad, encompassing love, death, fate, and other profound human experiences.

Literary Stages

• Avant-garde Influence: Initially, they were influenced by the European avant-garde, tending towards the ideal of pure poetry and seeking to eliminate overly human or sentimental elements from their works.
• Commitment: Later, they embraced feelings and engaged

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" »