Latin American Independence in Literature
*Three-week course, first session*

The process of independence of the new Latin American nations that broke off from the old Spanish Catholic monarchy were accompanied by a major renovation of continental letters. The transition from neoclassical to romantic poetry in Andrés Bello, José María Heredia, and José Joaquín Olmedo, and the first prose works of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi or Esteban Echeverría, are representative of the literature of the first generation of Republican Spanish America. The purpose of this course is to reconstruct the aesthetic and political project that rested on the early works by Spanish American writers, including in these politicians whose prose formulations achieved great influence, as in the case of Simón Bolívar and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier. The course emphasis will be placed on the analysis of various strategies of narrating the birth of new republics within the poetry or prose of those writers. (.5 unit)

Required text: Electronic material provided at Middlebury.

This course is cross-listed with Literature.