SPN 411 - Don Quijote

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU.
Prerequisite(s): SNC 304 - Texts & Contexts .
Don Quijote is one of the greatest and most humorous books ever written, and this course offers an in-depth study of Cervantes’s masterpiece, providing structural and historical insight into the birth of the modern novel. We will examine Don Quijote, as an emblem of artistic and social modernity in the West and as a multi-faceted cultural icon central to the humanities, exploring issues such as the nature of reality and illusion, heroism, humor, adventure, freedom and self-fulfillment, racial tolerance, love, the consequences of reading, metafiction, games, and truth. This course will also investigate the transition from an oral to a written culture and the importance of printing, and we will explore the problem of Spanish national identity through the emerging imperial processes of political and cultural exclusion. Class is conducted in Spanish.