SPANISH CULTURE AND LITERATURE

Spanish Culture and Literature is a compulsory subject for students enrolled in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation. Its aim is to provide students with some basic and occasionally in-depth information on Spanish cultures in the first half of the 20th century, particularly through theater. Authors and works in Spanish and also in Catalan will be considered.

Students are supposed to know, at the end of the course, the main features of Spanish culture and history in the first half of the 20th century (Spanish dictatorships, the Second Republic) with a particular focus on some selected topics and authors: Guimerà and Rusiñol, for the Catalan speaking culture, and José Echegaray, García Lorca and Miguel Mihura for the Spanish speaking culture.

A level of Spanish equal to a B2 (CEFR). No certificate is needed.

The course will be divided into three parts: 1. A survey of Spanish history and culture in the first half of the twentieth century (from the 1898 crisis to Franco's dictatorship up to the beginning of the 1960s). 2. An outline of Catalan culture. 3. Theater in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century: Guimerà and Echegaray; García Lorca and Mihura. Some works by these authors will be considered, especially the plays by Miguel Mihura.

Only for English native speakers. The following books (or part of them) must be read:
F. Romero Salvadó, Arriba España. Twentieth-Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898-1998, London, Macmillan, 1999.
Gwynne Edwards, Dramatists in Perspective: Spanish Theatre in the Twentieth Century, Cardiff, Cardiff University of Wales Press, 1985. Just the first four chapters.
Four plays by the authors considered during lectures:
one play by Guimerà or Echegaray (must be chosen between Marta of the Lowlands or O locura o santidad), one by Federico García Lorca (La casa de Bernarda Alba), two by Miguel Mihura (must be chosen between:
Tres sombreros de copa, El caso de la mujer asesinadita, El caso del señor vestido de violeta, Maribel y la extraña familia, Ninette y un señor de Murcia).
The play Marta of the Lowlands (English version) is available for free at https://archive.org/details/cu31924027785843/page/n5/mode/2up . O locura o santidad is also available (in Spanish) for free at: https://archive.org/details/olocurasantidadd00eche/page/12/mode/2up
La casa de Bernarda Alba is available at: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-casa-de-bernarda-alba-775125/html/6aef1659-90e7-443f-bd6c-a8fe62c4c04a_2.html#I_0 _
As far as the plays by Mihura are concerned, they're still under copyright restrictions and so must be purchased or read in a library. In the department library is available the Teatro completo by Mihura from his Obra completa.

Oral. Two or three questions concerning the programme. Each student will have 20 minuts to answer all the questions.

Conventional lectures (face to face) with the aid of films, plays broadcast by Spanish television, slides and documentaries.

Italian

Lectures will be delivered in Italian.

oral