Fall 2003

SPN 350 • Studies in Hispanic Life and Culture

Course Description

While critics once insisted that surrealism had not entered Spain, we now know that some of the roots of surrealism are Spanish. This course will acquaint students with those roots—those literary, filmic, and artistic texts that represent Spain’s contribution to surrealism. After a brief review of the origins of the surrealist movement in France, the course focuses upon the literary/artistic generation in Spain that contributed to this movement, the Generation of 1927. The core texts of surrealism in Spain by Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, and Federico García Lorca, and Vicente Aleixandre will be read and analyzed. Students will view Buñuel’s 27-minute landmark film, Un chien andalou. Paintings by Oscar Dominguez, Dalí, Miró, and Remedios Varo will also be viewed for a fuller understanding of Spain’s contribution to surrealism. The course concludes with readings of some postwar texts that reveal the legacy of surrealism in literature and painting after the demise of the first generation of surrealists. Literary texts such as Arrabal’s absurdist plays, and Dámaso Alonso’s Hijos de la ira, together with the paintings of Aantoni Tapiés, reveal that surrealism, the most important of the vanguard movements, survived the Spanish Civil War to become a prominent feature of postwar literary/artistic discourse.

Grading Policy

1 short paper in Spanish 20% 1 mid-term exam in Spanish 30% A final exam in Spanish 30% 12-min oral report in Spanish 20%

Texts

Breton, Manifestos del surrealismo Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York Alberti, Sobre los angeles Cernuda, Antología poética Arrabal, El laberinto; Los dos verdugos; Pic-nic Alonso, Hijos de la ira Buñuel, Un chien andalou

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