SPN 415 - The Literature of Conquest & Colonization in Spanish America

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirement DE and HU.
Prerequisite(s): SPN 304 - Advanced Spanish Conversation & Composition .
Reading and discussion of poetry and prose by Indoamerican writers of the Pre-Columbian era and by Spanish American writers from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Students will explore how literary components such as theme, character, and imagery represent the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and its resulting confluence of indigenous, African, and European cultures as they trace the development of Spanish American literature from its earliest expressions in pre-conquest cultures to the first declarations of defiance against the Spanish Crown by colonial writers. Emphasis is placed on an understanding of the technical development of various genres within each literary period as well as on the thematic content of work as it relates to the period’s historical, political, social, and philosophical content. Class is conducted in Spanish.