A Close Reading of Spanish and Latin American Poetry

The course will center on a textual explanation of poems ranging from the Middle Ages to Contemporary poetry. Each poem will be looked into with a fine comb, analyzing each line, word by word, in order to establish and reinforce a given theory or manner of explaining the text in question, based on the biography of the author, the times in which he/she lived, and the way language functions in the poem. Above all, language will be the primary force to be studied, the way it conveys, hides, enriches the text or demolishes itself, and/or its historical period. We will look into poems by such diverse authors as Lope de Vega, Góngora, Juan Ramón Jiménez, San Juan de la Cruz, some Spanish Romances, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Darío, López Velarde, Vallejo, Neruda, Armando Uribe, Marosa Di Giorgio, Coral Bracho, among others. (1 unit)

Required text: Course materials will be available at Middlebury.