SPAN 311: Glory, Splendor, and Decay: Spanish Golden Age Literature Professor: Dr.

Jennifer Darrell Email: jdarrell@fairfield.edu Office: CNS 215 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00-3:00, Wednesdays, 10:00 am 12:00 pm, & by appointment Class: 11:00 am 12:15 pm Tuesdays and Fridays, DMH 231 I. Course Description: This course studies the most important literary manifestations of the 16th- and 17th-centuries' Golden Age Spanish culture, with emphasis on Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Caldern de la Barca, Quevedo, and Gngora. We will read selections of prose, poetry, and theater, and we will study the ways in which these works are both a reflection of and a response to their cultural and historical context. We will learn about the formal, thematic, stylistic, and aesthetic innovations of Golden Age authors, and we will investigate the factors that led to the development of these innovations at this particular historical moment. II. Goals and Learning Objectives for the Course and their aligned pathways: The overarching core integration Pathways that this course fulfills are: A) Engaging Traditions & B) Rhetoric & Reflection Goal 1: Building on the Fairfield Pathway on Engaging Traditions, students will become familiar with, identify, and interpret various literary works from the Spanish Golden Age. Students will engage this literary tradition in its own context as well as consider how the study of literature from the Spanish Golden Age is still relevant and useful today. Learning objectives for Goal 1: By the end of this semester you will be able to. a) Recognize and critically interpret a selection of prose, poetry, and theater from the Spanish Golden Age b) Understand the connections between the history of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries and the literature produced during this time period c) Appreciate the ways in which any literary tradition reflects and responds to its historical and cultural context Goal 2: Building on the Fairfield Pathway on Rhetoric and Reflection, students will use critical reading skills to assess and strengthen their own competence in written and spoken expression in the Spanish language through analysis, reflection, and in-class participation. Students will sharpen their ability to formally discuss literature. Learning objectives for Goal 2: By the end of the semester, you will be able to a) Recognize and evaluate perspectives and point of view in their own and others writing b) Construct an eloquent, effective and evidence-based argument for formal written compositions c) Demonstrate skillful use of spoken and written language, communicating effectively both orally and in writing

III. Materials for class 1) J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1718 (Bookstore) 2) Annimo, Lazarillo de Tormes (Bookstore) 3) Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares: Rinconete y Cortadillo, El casamiento engaoso, and El coloquio de los perros (Blackboard) 4) Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Bookstore) 5) Lope de Vega, El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (Blackboard) 6) Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna (Bookstore) 7) Caldern de la Barca, La vida es sueo (Bookstore) 8) Caldern de la Barca, El sacristn mujer (Blackboard) 9) Luis Quiones de Benavente, El Martinillo (Blackboard) 10) A selection of poetry from Garcilaso de la Vega, Santa Teresa de Jess, San Juan de la Cruz, Francisco de Quevedo, and Luis de Gngora (Blackboard)

IV. Evaluation: Grade Components Daily participation Blackboard reflections First paper Second Paper Presentation: Historical Information Presentation: Critical Article Midterm Final Total

15% 10% 15% (5% for the first draft, 10% for the second draft) 15% (5% for the first draft, 10% for the second draft) 7.5% 7.5% 15% 15% 100 %

V. Daily Responsibilities: You will prepare the assigned readings before coming to class. Consistent, conscientious intellectual discussion is vital to the success of this class and I will therefore assume you have all read and reflected on the readings before class. 1. Attendance: According to the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures all students are expected to attend every scheduled class session. As this class meets twice per week, you are only allowed a maximum of two absences to do with as you wish. Please use these absences wisely. Each absence after your second will result in a reduction of your final grade by 3 percentage points. A student with three absences and a final grade of 87 will earn a grade of 84. Also, you are expected to arrive to class on time ready to actively participate. Three late arrivals (of five minutes or more) will equal one unexcused absence. If you miss a day of class, you are still responsible for the assignments that were due that day, and the notes from class. To ensure fairness to your community of learners, *I will not be able to accept any late work.* If you are absent you are still expected to turn in your work on the day that the work is due. Be sure to get the contact information of two of your classmates to stay up to date in case of an absence. You will be able to contact your peers through Blackboard-communication-under the email option. You may wish to check in with your peers throughout the course to share research articles, bibliographies, peer-review and feedback. It is crucial that you are active in participating in and respecting our class community. 2

2. Participation: This is a 300 level class and participation is extremely important to the success of the course. It is the responsibility of the student to thoroughly prepare the readings and contribute to Blackboard before coming to class. While I want you to enjoy the class, my primary objective is for you to strengthen your written and oral skills in Spanish, participate in class discussions openly, and grasp an understanding of the ways that Spanish Golden Age literature reflects and interacts with its historical context. You will grade yourself once midway throughout the semester and once at the end of the semester using the participation rubric available under the Information tab on Blackboard. Strong participation includes coming prepared, speaking solely in Spanish, initiating course discussion, and asking questions to create more meaning of the texts. Since this is an advanced course, participation is highly valued and represents 15% of your grade. You will grade yourself using the rubric, and I will be in dialogue with you explaining whether or not I agree with the grade that you assign yourself. Your midterm participation grade will count for 5%, and your final participation grade will count for 10%. Please note that in order to create a participatory atmosphere, cell phones will not be permitted during class. Laptops should be used only for taking notes (i.e. you should not be surfing the web for any reason), and I reserve the right to restrict their use if it seems they are becoming a distraction. It is a short 75-minute class so please consider it a break from the virtual world. Checking in with cell phones, etc., will result in a lower participation grade. Additionally, since the class is only 75 minutes long, you should plan to be in the classroom the entire time. Please take care of bathroom breaks and any other needs before coming to class. I understand that the occasional emergency may arise, but if you are consistently and repeatedly leaving class, your participation grade will be lowered accordingly. 3. Nightly Reflections on Blackboard: Each day, before coming to class, you will reflect thoughtfully and critically in writing to the readings assigned for class. These reflections are meant to be short (approximately 150 words), and they should represent some aspect of the reading that you found particularly interesting, troubling, difficult, insightful, etc. You can be as broad or as specific as you wish perhaps you wish to comment on the way a text reflects some aspect of its historical context, or perhaps you are interested in an authors use of a particular word. There are many possible approaches to these reflections, and all are valid, so long as you take them seriously. These reflections should be posted in Blackboard in the appropriate Discussion Forum. (NB: Even if you write your reflections in a Word document, please copy and paste directly into the forum instead of uploading a copy of your document. This will facilitate everyones ability to find and read your ideas.) We will use these reflections as the basis for our class discussions, so please take them seriously and put thought into your work. Please read the reflections that your peers place on Blackboard--they are for everyone to see. It is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, for your reflection to be a response to one of your peers. Do you agree with him or her? Disagree? Why or why not? Can you take someone elses insight a step further, or apply it to a different section of the text? You can create the beginnings of a discussion on Blackboard, which we will then continue in class. These assignments are meant to help you write freely while testing out ideas, arguments and language in a low-stakes writing environment. You should edit your work so that it is as clean as possible, but your grade will be based solely on the content of your reflections, not on your grammar. These reflections are worth 10% of your final grade. As long as I feel you are taking the work seriously, you will receive full credit for each reflection completed on time. You cant be wrong for trying out an idea, and you wont 3

be graded based on whether or not I agree with you. I do reserve the right to lower your grade if it seems that you are putting minimal time and effort into your work. VI. Additional Assignments 1. Papers: All papers and written work must be prepared according to the MLA guidelines. I will not accept or edit sloppy papers. It is up to you to prepare for the honest grade that you will earn. Please double check the formatting of your paper with the MLA online guide: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ Formatting is part of the grading rubric and represents 10 points of each final grade of a paper. You should use size 12 of a professional-looking serif font with one-inch margins. Your last name and the page number should appear on all pages except the first; please omit this running header on the first page. Please use parenthetical citations. You will include a works cited page at the end of your paper. Papers should be 5-7 pages in length, not counting the works cited page, and must be stapled. Please note that papers are due at the BEGINNING of class on the day they are assigned. No late work will be accepted; you will receive a zero for any papers not turned in on time. Do not miss class on the day a paper is due. If you need to miss class, using one of the two excused absences, you will need to send your paper to class with a classmate. There are two mandatory versions of each paper. The first draft will count for 5% of your final grade, and the second draft will count for 10%. A second version does not mean that I will serve as your editor. It also does not mean that you will automatically earn a grade increase. Both versions of your written work should be taken seriously and heavily edited. I will use a shorthand for corrections, and the key to understanding these corrections is available on Blackboard under the Information tab. I expect that the second draft will contain significant revisions to the content and organization of your paper. If you simply make the grammatical corrections, your grade will improve only slightly, if at all. I will meet with you each individually during the revision process of the first paper in order to go over my comments on your first draft and to help you understand what is expected of you in formal, written academic work. A similar meeting will not be mandatory for the second paper, but I am happy to offer consultation to any who wish to meet with me.

2. Presentations: You will present twice over the course of the semester. One of the presentations will be based on the historical readings from Elliott. The second presentation will be on a critical article related to the readings for class. To assess both presentations, I will use the Rubric for Oral Presentations available on Blackboard under the Information tab for the course (please see Blackboard before presentation to review the Oral Presentation Rubric). You are allowed to use notes, but you will not be able to read directly from them. Before presenting please edit your notes, checking for both content and grammar, practice your presentation technique (e.g. not reading from your notes), and prepare yourself for possible questions from both the professor and your peers. Each presentation should be 5-7 minutes in length, with 3-5 minutes for questions at the end. I also expect you all to be active listeners. You should engage with your classmates during their presentations and ask insightful questions afterwards.

a. Historical Presentations: 4

Each week one student will present a summary of the information contained in the assigned chapter from Elliotts Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. Please note that while the reading is in English, you will be expected to give the presentation in Spanish. You should highlight the information that seems the most important and relevant, providing a concise, insightful summary. You should also comment on any connections you see between the historical information contained in Elliott and the readings we are doing/have done in class. You will also prepare a one-page handout, written in Spanish, that summarizes the chapter. This way, at the end of the semester, each student will have a 10-page summary of Elliotts book that will serve as a study guide for the exam and as a point of reference for you in your future studies of Spanish. Please note that while only one student is responsible for presenting on Elliott each week, everyone is expected to come to class having read the material, and you are all responsible for the information in all of the assigned reading.

b. Presentation of a critical article Each student will present one critical article related to the readings for class. Your presentation should summarize the main argument of the article you have chosen, along with the most important supporting evidence and any conclusions drawn by its author. You should then include your own critical assessment of the article. Do you agree with the author? Why or why not? What are the strengths and weaknesses of his/her argument? I am happy to consult with you, but you are responsible for finding and choosing the article you wish to present. JSTOR and Project Muse are excellent resources; these are online databases of scholarly journals where you can find a wide variety of critical articles on any subject imaginable. Students presenting on Cervantes may also wish to consult www.cervantesjournal.com, which contains the archives of Cervantes, the official journal of the Cervantes Society of America. Links to these resources may be found on Blackboard, under the Information tab. The purpose of this presentation is multi-fold: 1) It will help you learn about the resources available to you as you conduct scholarly investigations and write research papers. 2) It will provide you with examples of formal academic writing that you can strive to imitate in your own work. 3) It will help develop your own critical skills, as you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the articles you have chosen. 4) It will enrich your understanding of the texts we are reading, as it will provide new perspectives and insights into these texts. 3. Exams: This course will have a midterm and a final. Each will be worth 15% of your final grade. Each exam will consist of a combination of short answer and essay questions. More information on the format of the exams will be given in the time leading up to each exam.

VII. Academic Honesty: I take this very seriously. Please see the section on Academic Honesty in the Fairfield University Undergraduate Catalog for a complete explanation of the universitys policies. In short, In all academic work, students are expected to submit materials that are their own and are to include attribution for any ideas or language that are not their own. If you are ever in doubt as to whether something is permissible or not, please ask!

Assigned Readings Materials should be read BEFORE coming to class January 17: Friday Introduction to the class What is the Spanish Golden Age? Lazarillo de Tormes: Prlogo y Tractado 1 Lazarillo de Tormes: Tractado 2 y Tractado 3 Elliott, Ch. 1 (Presentation) Lazarillo de Tormes: Tractados 4, 5, 6, y 7 (Presentation on critical article) Cervantes, Rinconete y Cortadillo Elliott, Ch. 2 (Presentation) Cervantes, El casamiento engaoso and El coloquio de los perros (Presentation on critical article) First draft of essay #1 due Cervantes, Don Quijote I, Prlogo and Chs. 1-5 Elliott, Ch. 3 (Presentation). Presentation on a historical source TBD. Cervantes, Don Quijote I, Chs. 6-9, 16-17 (Presentation on critical article x2) Class will not meet. Students will meet individually with the professor to discuss their essays. Please bring initial participation grades to the meeting along with your papers. February 18: Tuesday February 21: Friday No class. Monday classes meet instead. Cervantes, Don Quijote I, Chs. 21-22, 44-54 (Beginning at pg. 463) Elliott, Ch. 4 (Presentation) Second draft of essay #1 due Cervantes, Don Quijote II, Prlogo and Chs. 1-3, 7, 9-10 (Presentation on critical article) Cervantes, Don Quijote II, Chs. 12-15, 22-24 (pp. 717-734), 25-27 (744-761) Elliott, Ch. 5 (Presentation) Cervantes, Don Quijote II, Chs. 30-32, 34-35, 64-65 (to pg. 1050), 73-74 (Presentation on critical article) Midterm exam Lope de Vega, El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo Elliott, Ch. 6 (Presentation). Presentation on a historical source TBD. Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, Acto I (Presentation on critical article)

January 21: Tuesday January 24: Friday January 28: Tuesday January 31: Friday

February 4: Tuesday

February 7: Friday February 11: Tuesday February 14: Friday first

February 25: Tuesday February 28: Friday

March 4: Tuesday

March 7: Friday March 11: Tuesday March 14: Friday

7 March 18: Tuesday Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, Acto II Elliott, Ch. 7 (Presentation) Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, Acto III (Presentation on critical article) Spring Break Caldern de la Barca, La vida es sueo, Acto I (Presentation on critical article) Caldern de la Barca, La vida es sueo, Acto II Elliott, Ch. 8 (Presentation) Caldern de la Barca, La vida es sueo, Acto III (Presentation on critical article x2) Caldern de la Barca, El sacristn mujer Elliott, Ch. 9 (Presentation) First draft of essay #2 due Luis Quiones de Benavente, El Martinillo (Presentation on critical article) No class. Easter vacation. Selected poetry: Garcilaso de la Vega, Santa Teresa de Jess, and San Juan de la Cruz Elliott, Ch. 10 (Presentation). Selected poetry: Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Gngora (Presentation on critical article) Second draft of essay #2 due Last day of class. Summary and review. Presentation on a historical source TBD.

March 21: Friday March 24-28 April 1: Tuesday April 4: Friday

April 8: Tuesday April 11: Friday

April 15: Tuesday April 18: Friday April 22: Tuesday April 25: Friday

April 29: Tuesday

The Final exam for this course is Friday, May 2, at 3:00 pm.