DESCRIPTION

Four texts will be examined as a reflection of the language, life, and concerns of Spaniards in the 20th century. The historical, social, and cultural content of each text is explained and special attention is given to language. The course has both a literary and linguistic dimension.

REFLECTIONS

Professor- Rafael was quite a character.  He taught at Middlebury for a couple years but was a full-fledged Spaniard.  The fact that he had spent time in the US made for some interesting cultural comparisons.  Rafael would explain the cultural practices we read about in our novels and teach us a lot about cultural differences we might not have picked up on or understood.  For example, a character in one of our novels bought chestnuts on the street.  Rafael explained to us the chestnut culture of Madrid; people used to put them in their pockets to stay warm during the winter. 

Teaching Method- Rafael was a stickler for making sure we looked up every word of the novel we didn’t understand.  Even slang words we were expected to define before class, such as “tío,” which literally means uncle, but in Spain also means, “dude.”  Although this made the class very challenging, it also meant that I learned a lot of new words.  I would make lists in my planner of words from my text learn them as I rode the metro to class.

            The philosophy behind this demand was that you can only fully understand a novel if you read all of the author’s words.  I found this to be true (as long as the author has carefully chosen his or her words in the first place). Maybe I have been told this before in my English classes, but this was the first time I grasped the importance of each word in a novel. The word “tío” for example, which I didn’t understand at first, was significant in defining the nature of the relationship between the two characters.  Reading a novel in Spanish really highlights how misunderstanding even one word in a sentence can cause one to miss out on meaningful information.

SEMESTER: Spring 2008

GRADE: B+