Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Paper Sp 9
Spanish Literature, Thought, and History, after 1820
This paper has five topics, and students are required to answer on three of the topics in the examination, but candidates are advised that only four questions per topic will be set.
The rubric of the paper is: 'Candidates for this paper may NOT draw substantially on material from their dissertations or material which they have used or intend to use in another scheduled paper. Candidates may NOT draw substantially on the same material in more than one question on the same paper.
For each question you should refer to AT LEAST TWO texts or authors. You are free to refer to literary texts, films and other works of art in your answers.'
In all of the topics there will be the opportunity to answer on a variety of texts, chosen either from within a particular period, or combining texts from different periods. There will be a particular concentration on film in 'Staging Issues', but films will be available as possible texts for reference in all of the other topics. There are no set texts for the paper; the Reading List suggests key texts, but please consult your supervisor on which texts are appropriate for a particular topic. It will not be possible to draw on the same text more than once in the paper.
A brief outline of the topics is as follows:
Nature and Culture
The major novels of the late 19c in Spain are informed by a context of the debate about nature versus culture. This encompasses questions of education, degeneration, politics, art versus science, gender and power, city and country. The topic includes a consideration of the material world in literature (for example in cursileri_a), and offers the opportunity of work on novels of the 1960s, for example, that take up questions of heredity and environment.
Experiments in Form
This topic covers artistic experimentation in Spain throughout the 20c, but with a special concentration on the rich and innovative period 1900-1939, with modernity in art, surrealism, aesthetic theory. It would include later experimental writing, particularly in the novel. There is the opportunity here of combining work on avant-garde writing with the plastic arts and film.
Writing Memory
There are two principal aspects to this topic: writing the national, and writing the personal. Texts could thus relate to personal memory and autobiography, or to the writing involved in national or public memory (and the reaction to such writings). Questions of historiography, censorship, self-censorship, and stereotypes would be included, as would issues concerning autobiography and subjectivity.
Staging Issues
This topic includes both film in Spain (from Bunñuel through to post-Franco) and theatre (with an emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s). As the title suggests, the topic allows focus on issues of technique and staging, but also on the ways in which stage and screen can be used to explore issues. Questions of image, performance, types,and the particular nature of film and theatre will be studied, and opportunity given to consider the relations between film and theatre.
Between Women
Many texts concentrate on relationships between men and women or present views that edit out the feminine. This topic allows the opportunity to redress the balance,and to look at women relating to other women. This includes the representation of filial, maternal and sororial relationships, with their rich and complex dynamic, aswell as issues of women's writing. Texts appropriate for this topic range from the late 19c to the present day.
A full Reading List for this paper is available online
Cambridge bookshops (Heffers and Waterstone's) are aware of our reading lists. You may be able to purchase second-hand copies of some of the books from Heffers (tel. 01223 568568). You might also like to try online book-sellers like Amazon, alibris or abebooks.
All lists are available online: see the Department's Home Page (spanish), under Reading Lists.
