Spanish Literature (MA)

The course, held entirely in Spanish, is entitled "Itinerarios de la memoria: la literatura del exilio republicano de 1939", and is divided into two parts. In the first (compulsory for all students and valid for 6 credits), a general historical and cultural overview will be presented, with the aim of framing the specific phenomenon of republican exile (even in relation to other diasporic processes in Spanish history). Then, the vital and intellectual trajectories of a few selected authors will be analysed, so that students acquire the knowledge of the three cardinal principles of republican exile literature: its heterogeneity, its counter-hegemonic political and cultural value, and its connections with the global geopolitical context. A specific attention will be devoted to the testimonies and narrative re-elaborations of the experience of republican refugees in the French concentrationary system and in the Nazi lagers. The corpus proposed will be formed by Max Aub, Francisco Ayala, Luisa Carnés, María Teresa León, Silvia Mistral, Federica Montseny and Jorge Semprún, whose prose texts will be analysed with a specific focus on the autobiographical genre. Furthermore, a space will be dedicated to reflect on the theoretical and methodological problems implied by the literature of the republican exile; in particular, the relationship between the mentioned writers and the Spanish literary canon will be questioned. The second part of the course (reserved for the students who wish to acquire 9 credits), centers on the theatre of the exiles, with the aim of framing its problems and peculiarities both of writing and of circulation, as well as its most frequent themes and different ideological nuances. Rafael Alberti, Francisco Arrabal, Max Aub and Alejandro Casona will be the main authors examined, although there will also be an overview on other less studied figures. Whenever possible, the reading of the works will be accompanied by the viewing of videoclips.