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

18th-Century Literary Masters: Journalism and the Novel

The Age of Reason and the Birth of Modern Journalism

The early 18th century, often called the Age of Reason, saw a significant shift in literary focus, marked by the rise of periodical essays and modern journalism, shaping public opinion and morality. The following figures were instrumental in this development:

Richard Steele

• Biography: Born in Dublin. He studied at Oxford University but did not finish his degree, subsequently entering the army.
• Personality & Style: Known for being impulsive and moralistic. His writing style was informal and intimate.
• Key Role: His most important role was in the periodical The Tatler.
• Major Works: The Christian Hero, The Funeral, and other comedies.
• Journalism:

Narrative Texts

Narrative is the telling of real or imagined events that happen to characters in a specific place and time. In every narrative, there is a story (the series of events that have occurred in reality or in the fiction we imagine) and a discourse (which is the expression of those facts, with order and structure).

Elements of Narrative

• Author: The real person who writes the story.
• Narrator:
  • Third-person: Tells what happens to others.
    • Omniscient Narrator: Knows everything, even the thoughts and feelings of the characters.
    • Absent Narrator: Only accounts for the most visible or external aspects.
  • First-person: Can tell what happened to them as the protagonist of an autobiography (e.g., Lazarillo de Tormes).
  • Witness Narrator: Tells what they

Spanish Romantic Poetry: Themes and Characteristics

Romantic poetry is the genre that best expresses the Romantic spirit. Its poetic themes include freedom, the ideal woman, disappointment in love, melancholy, weariness of life, the satanic, the supernatural, death, and the exotic and legendary. These feelings are often reflected in the landscape (night, moon, cemetery, rough sea). Formally, Romantic poetry shows a clear intention of renewal. It introduces new rhythms and accents, imbuing poems with a great musical sense, and often alternates verses of different meters and measures. The language is cultured and rhetorical.

Two types of poetry emerged: epic or narrative poetry, which drew themes from tradition, history, or legend, and rehabilitated... Continue reading "Spanish Romantic Poetry: Themes, Style, and Major Poets" »

Part of Don Quixote

DQ First Departure: Chapters 1-6

Alonso Quijano, believing himself a knight, seeks an appropriate name, chooses a lady, and names his horse. The adventures of the knight always go wrong. After being beaten, a neighbor recognizes him, and he returns to the village.

Second Exit: Chapters 7-52

They seek a servant. Sancho and DQ come to Sierra Morena.

Second Part of Don Quixote

Third Exit: 74 Chapters

DQ and Sancho leave their village and travel towards Barcelona in Aragon. After arriving in Barcelona, DQ duels with the Knight of the White Moon on the beach, loses, and is obliged to return to his village for a year. Shortly after arriving, DQ falls ill, recovers his sanity, and dies.

Intent of Don Quixote

Cervantes wrote Don Quixote... Continue reading "Don Quixote and the Baroque: A Literary Journey" »

Jorge Manrique's Coplas: Themes and Legacy

Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la muerte de su padre (Stanzas on the Death of His Father) is a profound work that reflects on the equality of all before death, the transience of earthly life, the vanity of worldly possessions, and contempt for the material world.

Key Themes in the Coplas

• The Three Lives Concept: Manrique distinguishes between:
  • Earthly Life: Fleeting and subject to decay.
  • Life of Fame (Fama): A medieval topic, where the poet uses examples of famous people and historical events to demonstrate the ephemeral nature of earthly glory and reputation.
  • Eternal Life: This ultimately transcends both earthly life and fame, offering true permanence.
• Acceptance of Death: The work concludes with Don Rodrigo'

Heroic Poetry in Old English

Widsith (7th-8th Century)

Widsith recounts his travels throughout the Germanic world, mentioning the many rulers he visited. While primitive in style, this very quality makes Widsith particularly interesting.

Beowulf (8th Century)

As the only complete epic of its kind in an ancient Germanic language, Beowulf vividly illustrates the combination of heroic idealism and the darker, more violent aspects typical of the Germanic temperament.

Deor's Lament (8th Century)

It recounts the lament of a minstrel who, after many years of service to his lord, has been replaced by a rival named Heorenda.

The Finnesburg Fragment

This fragment depicts the joy found in physical combat under a heroic code. There is also an effective use of... Continue reading "Old English Poetry: Heroic Epics, Religious Verse, and Lyrical Elegies" »

Early Spanish Renaissance Theater

Early Spanish Theater featured two main currents:

• Religious Drama: Focused on cultivating the life of Jesus.
• Profane Theater: Included burlesque elements, themes of love, and pastoral settings.

Significant authors of this period include Lucas Fernández and Juan del Encina.

La Celestina: Editions and Authorship

The work, originally titled Comedia de Calisto y Melibea, saw several key early editions:

• 1499: First edition published in Burgos, consisting of 16 acts.
• 1500: New editions published in Toledo and Salamanca.
• 1501: This edition included a foreword where the author explains finding some papers in Salamanca that reasoned about the evils of love, prompting him to continue the work. It also included two poems:
  1. Acrostic

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)

The lyrics of Federico Garcia Lorca possess great musicality, both when the poet uses traditional metrics—the octosyllabic in gypsy romances—and in avant-garde compositions like Poet in New York, in predominantly free verse. Another stylistic feature is the plasticity of his images, which have a clear relationship with the surrealist movement. Federico Garcia Lorca's poems depict human tragedy, where higher forces, represented by social conventions, political trends, and, above all, death, prevent happiness. Other notable works of this poet's lyrics, who is probably the best known of his generation, include the Poem of Flamenco Singing and the elegy mourning the death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías.

Vicente

Theme of Modernism

Literature of the Senses

Some writers focused on the sensuous external, seeking formal perfection and beauty.

Privacy Literature

This points to the expression of intimacy, the author's feelings, which can be vitalistic or optimistic, anxious or melancholic.

Recurring Themes

1. The Spiritual Crisis

Feelings of loneliness, melancholy, sadness, and the uprooting from a society that is unable or unwilling to understand the artist, often in opposition to the rational and real. Expression was achieved by means of symbols.

2. Evasion

The writer, immersed in a reality they dislike, must manifest their disconformity somehow. Some attempt to transform reality through criticism and political action, but others prefer to escape that reality and... Continue reading "Modernism in Literature: Themes and Style" »

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and His Rhymes

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born in 1836 and who died in 1870, belonged to the Romantic movement of the first half of the nineteenth century in Spain. This period was historically marked by three events that determined the literary tradition and the orientation of the authors: the War of Independence, the reign of Fernando VII, and the reign of Elizabeth II. The latter's start was stormy due to power struggles that generated political instability. Romanticism is characterized by the rejection of reality and escape into an imaginary world, the analysis of privacy, defense of the author's freedom, and the importance of landscape and environment.

Bécquer's Rhymes were written between 1857 and 1868 but were not... Continue reading "Spanish Literature: Bécquer's Rhymes and Clarín's La Regenta" »