Literary and Cultural Texts and Traditions
Periods and figures you must place correctly
Build a mental timeline. Medieval: jarchas, Cantar de mio Cid, mester de clerecía (Berceo), Alfonso X's prose. Renaissance/Golden Age: Garcilaso, the picaresque (Lazarillo de Tormes), Cervantes, Lope de Vega's comedia nueva, Calderón, Quevedo vs. Góngora (conceptismo vs. culteranismo), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Nineteenth century: realism and naturalism (Galdós, Clarín, Pardo Bazán). Modernismo: Rubén Darío, Azul... (1888) - musicality, synesthesia, exoticism, Parnassian and Symbolist influence. Generation of '98: Unamuno, Machado, Valle-Inclán. Generation of '27: Lorca, Alberti, Salinas, Guillén, Cernuda. Boom: García Márquez, Cortázar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa; poetry by Neruda, Mistral, Borges.
Traps
- Attributing a work to the wrong author or the wrong movement.
- Confusing modernismo (Hispanic, 1880s–1910s) with English "modernism."
- Misidentifying rhetorical figures: hyperbaton (altered word order), anaphora (repetition at clause openings), synesthesia (mixing senses), metonymy (contiguity) vs. metaphor (resemblance).
Rule of thumb
When a passage is unfamiliar, date it by formal signals rather than by topic: archaic lexicon and mester verse point to medieval; elaborate Latinate syntax and mythological allusion to culteranismo; musical rhythm, swans, and exotic settings to modernismo; fragmented chronology and multiple narrators to the Boom.