SPAN 3720

Love and Seduction in 19th Century Spain

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

How does modernity imagine love and sexuality?  What are the boundaries between licit and illicit forms of sexual desire?  As am emergent European modernity pitted individual freedom against the glorified middle-class values of marriage and family, literature recreated and shaped this tension in its pages.  It narrated scenarios of seduction, love affairs, and sexual encounters.  This course provides an exploration of the politics of love by way of a discussion of key texts of nineteenth-century Spanish theater and fiction.  By analyzing imaginaries of love, such as romance, troubled relationships, marriage, adultery, and their tension with social ideals, we will study major literary currents and styles, such as romanticism, realism, and decadence.  Texts will include: Bécquer's "Los ojos verdes" and "El beso de la estatua," Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio, Pardo Bazán's Insolación, Clarín's Doña Berta, and Benito Pérez Galdós' Tormento.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisites: SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, SPAN 2170, or CASE Q++, or permission of instructor.

Breadth Requirement (HB)
Distribution Category (LA-AS)
Language Requirement Satisfies Option 1.

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