Intermediate Spanish III: “Calles y Plaza Antigua”: From the Country to the City in Hispanic Literature and Film

Voracious, boundless, the den of unbridled lust and greed (La Celestina) or a heaven of opportunity, sometimes safety from prosecution and prejudice, the city is a polymorphous reality onto which we project our fantasies and desires (Atlantis, Eldorado, Axtlán). Feminized, it can be a courted or threatened citadel (traditional romances), the whore of Babylon, enticement and entrapment. It’s a seductive or frightening labyrinth (Borges, Sin noticias de Dios), the lettered city or the urban cauldron where immigrants sink or swim (El super, Los olvidados). If small, the imaginary solution to our contemporary rootlessness (Atame) or a metaphor for suffocating oppression (Lorca’s plays, Calle mayor, El espíritu de la colmena, Madeinusa). If metropolis, the centrifugal host of postmodern excesses and loss (Generación X, MacOndo), the tentative locus of postrevolutionary modernism (Maples Arce). Roads into or out of it and its darkened alleyways are the quintessential frame of noir narrative (Nahum Montt, Muñoz Molina). Is the country a haven for time-tested virtues and resistance to forms of coercion (Fuentovejuna), or a desert where all dreams are deformed or come crashing down (Ana María Matute)? Are nature and nurture, culture and history, at war with each other, and how can we negotiate our own space between them (Cortázar)? We will explore these themes—and others that will surely emerge in this context—in literature and film from both sides of the Atlantic, while pursuing a systematic review of advanced Spanish grammar. Intermediate III level, course taught in Spanish. If you have not studied Spanish at SLC prior to this year, It is strongly recommended that you take the Spanish Placement Test in addition to the interview with the instructor.