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CS92PROD
Rethinking the Baroque
SPAN 246
Spring 2016
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: COL 284

The Baroque has been defined as the quintessential Hispanic (Spanish and Latin American) aesthetic, in literature and the visual arts. It has also been defined as an essentially conservative, orthodox, pessimistic, and world-denying aesthetic. Instead, this class will examine the aesthetic in terms of its embrace of the sensual, material world; its love of fragmentation, and its imagining of a new citizen-reader able to participate in civic debate. We will examine fundamental categories of the literary Baroque, such as wit (agudeza) and desengaño (disenchantment), and the 17th-century equivalent of the nature-nurture debate (nature-art) and situate them in relation to scientific, political, and religious revolutions of the period. We will therefore explore ways in which 17th-century Spanish culture--far from being focused on decline and decay--optimistically embraced change and pioneered a proto-democratic aesthetic. We will look at diverse Baroque literary phenomena, from poetry to satire, from theories of invention and wit (Gracián, Tesauro, Pallavicino) to picaresque narrative, and from New World Baroque expressions ('Barroco de Indias') to political treatises. The democratic thrust of the Hispanic baroque will become apparent in the figure of the reader-citizen and in literary works that functioned as a civic space for public debate.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RLAN
Course Format: LectureGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (COL)(RMST)
Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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