- Department: English and Related Literature
- Credit value: 30 credits
- Credit level: I
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
‘Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States’ (Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo)
This module will take a broad view of Hispanic American literature in the period from roughly the 1920s to the present. The field is large, of course, and there will be no attempt at ‘representative’ coverage. Nevertheless, the module will include texts from all the larger Spanish-speaking countries--except for Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela—and will also look at some of the literature from Central America and Mexico. The focus will be on poetry and the novel. The module will particularly suit students who have an interest in Latin American politics, history, and literature: many of the texts are concerned with the difficult relationship between Hispanic America and the USA, besides complex issues to do with mestizaje (racial mixing) and the politics of unequal development.
Themes of the module will include revolution, dictatorship, colonialism, human rights, and the magical real, with some retrospective on the achievements of the Latin American boom and some attempt to place Hispanic American culture within an early 21st century framework.
The module will look at four of Hispanic America’s six Nobel prize winners in literature: Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 1945), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia, 1982), Octavio Paz (Mexico,1990), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, 2010).
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
The aims of this module are to introduce you to a range of Hispanic American texts (with appropriate use of film and other visual material), from roughly the 1920s to the present.
On successful completion of the module, you should be able to:
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 70 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 30 |
None
You will be given the opportunity to hand in a 1000 word formative essay in week 1 of the summer term. Material from this essay may be re-visited in your summative essay and it is therefore an early chance to work through material that might be used in assessed work.
This essay will be submitted in hard copy and your tutor will annotate it and return it two weeks later (usually in your week 3 seminar). Summary feedback will be uploaded to your eVision account.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 70 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 30 |
Novels
The module will include three of the most prominent writers of the Latin American Boom (Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo, Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes).
Further texts will be drawn from: José María Arguedas, Deep Rivers (1958), Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1982).
Poetry
Gabriela Mistral, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal, and a selection of revolutionary poetry from a range of countries.