(These are notes that went to the creation of the 2019 syllabus, and that can be used in the future.)

REVISION I OF ORIGINAL PLAN (SEE ORIGINAL PLAN BELOW)

Keywords: Modernity, cultural identity, ethnopoetics; subjectivity, interdisciplinarity, gender.

Week 1: Introduction to course and plans for first book report; introduction to rural tragedies and Yerma. “Charla sobre teatro.”
Weeks 2-3: Yerma.
Weeks 4-5: Impossible theatre — El público.
Week 6: First book report (October 2); Fall Break (October 4). TAREA: See the film Metropolis; prepare for Mayhew.
Weeks 6-7: Mayhew visit (October 8). Experimental poetry — Poeta en Nueva York.
Week 8: Modernist poetics — “Teoría y juego del duende.”
Weeks 9-11: Annotation project: “Arquitectura del cante jondo;” “Las nanas infantiles;” “La imagen poética de don Luis de Góngora;” possibly “Charla sobre teatro” and/or other
Week 12: Reading (for students); manuscript correction (for Leslie).
Week 13: Second book report (on additional lesser known theatre or later poetry).
Week 14: Writing: paper on the light any of the lecture may throw on any of the works.
Week 15: Creation of Power Point.
Finals Week: Creation of Final Report.

Note: the office of Research requires us to create a PowerPoint presentation describing the project, which must also be submitted at the end of the project period. It also encourages us to participate in an actual student presentation, demonstration, performance, or show of the scholarly work at some appropriate venue, such as the Annual Fall Undergraduate Research Invitational hosted each year by the Honors Program.

ORIGINAL PLAN

We will read Poet in New York, Diván del Tamarit, Así que pasen cinco años, Play without a title and El público, and annotate some of Lorca’s lectures and manifestos. We will take a close look at Lorca’s work in poetics and his contributions to international modernism, as well as his emphasis on orality, performance, and the poem as event.

This is not the “folkloric” Lorca but the more avant-garde one. What view of the writer emerges if we foreground his more experimental work, look at that first? Students who have not read El poema del cante jondo, Romancero gitano and the trilogy Yerma, Bodas de sangre, and La casa de Bernarda Alba may do so. Others may want to investigate the earliest poems or some additional theatre.

Summer reading

Stainton biography of Lorca and ideally, the two short books on modernism and the one on the Spanish civil war. All of this reading is in English and while information-packed, is written in an accessible style.

Program [tentative]

Day 1: Introduction; establish protocol for individual book purchases.
Day 2: Library visit. Focus: resources for annotation project. [Why, and how not to just Google]

Day 3: Who is Lorca? Discussion: Stainton. [A/V resources]
Day 4: What was the Spanish civil war? Discussion: Graham. [Film: Ay, Carmela and/or others]

Day 5: What is modernism? Discussion: Butler.
Day 6: What is modernism? Discussion: Winkiel.

Days 7-8: Experimental poetry: Poeta en Nueva York.

Days 9-10: “Impossible” theatre: El público, Así que pasen cinco años.

Days 11-12: Later poetry: [Poema del cante jondo], Diván del Tamarit, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, [Seis poemas galegos]; review this page and note the order in which these books were published.

Days 13-14: [Additional lesser-known theatre.]

Day 15: General discussion; reading notebooks due. [Note: we are working on writing as well, in different forms and formats]

Days 16-30: Project preparation and submission. [Research matrices, annotation, abstracts, summaries, commentaries, introductions]

The final examination is the composition and compilation of our final report. What were our objectives? What did we do? What was accomplished? How would we evaluate the experience? Students will come prepared and we will edit the document together.