Fundamentals of Rhetoric, Grammar, and Spanish Literary Analysis
Understanding Descriptive Writing
Description explains and represents reality through words. To create an effective description, the following phases should be taken into account:
- Observing the reality to be described.
- Selecting the most significant details.
- Ordering the selected data logically.
- Drafting the final text.
Objective vs. Subjective Description
Descriptions vary based on the author's intent and involvement:
Objective Description
The objective is to accurately reproduce reality, reflecting the way things really are. This style often uses many adjectives and is typical of factual content, such as scientific documentaries.
Subjective Description
The author reflects their personal feelings and emotions while describing. This style includes subjective feelings or personal opinions, often utilizing abundant epithets and other literary resources used in language and literary descriptions.
Techniques for Description
In the description of environments, logical order, the accuracy of the data (if it is a real environment), and the use of short sentences are important.
There are different specialized ways to describe people and settings:
- Prosopography: Focuses on physical features.
- Etopeya: Focuses on moral and psychological traits.
- Portrait: Combines physical and moral descriptions.
- Caricature: Uses exaggerated features.
- Self-Portrait: The author describes themselves.
- Topography: Descriptions of landscapes.
- Chronography: Portrays a historical period.
The Adjective: Function and Degrees
The adjective is the word in a noun phrase that complements the noun and expresses a quality of it. The adjective must agree with the noun in gender and number.
Degrees of Adjectives
The adjective can occur in degrees:
- Positive: The basic quality (e.g., big).
- Comparative: Comparing two items (e.g., bigger).
- Superlative: Expressing the highest quality (e.g., biggest).
Types of Adjectives
- Specifying Adjective: Adds a quality that serves to differentiate the noun from others in the same group (e.g., the blue shirt).
- Explanatory Adjective (Epithet): Notes a quality inherent to the noun without differentiating it from others in the same group (e.g., the cold snow).
Medieval Spanish Literature
Literary Characteristics
Mestas Clergy
- Author: Clergy (referring to educated writers).
- Features: This style has a very rich vocabulary and uses the cuaderna vía (frame track), which is a monorhyme stanza composed of four verses, each containing fourteen syllables.
Count Lucanor
The arguments of these stories are inspired by other stories from various sources, such as Greco-Latin fables or Eastern tales. Its structure is always the same:
- Count Lucanor presents a problem to Patronio, his counselor.
- Patronio tells a story to deduce the teaching applicable to the count's case.
The Pronoun and Its Functions
The pronoun is a word that replaces a noun phrase and performs the same functions as the noun phrase.
Types of Pronouns
- Personal Pronouns: Used to designate the persons directly involved in the communication and people or things not involved (the subject being spoken about).
- Determiner-like Pronouns: Demonstrative, possessive, indefinite, numeral, interrogative, and exclamatory pronouns are similar in form to determiner adjectives.
- Relative Pronouns: Replace a noun phrase referred to earlier (the antecedent).
Pronouns vs. Determiner Adjectives
Pronouns differ from determiner adjectives in that the latter always accompany the name, while pronouns stand alone, equivalent to an entire noun phrase.