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Key Modern Poets from Spain and Latin America

Module description

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870), Rubén Darío (1876-1916) and Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958) were all concerned with the status and mission of the poetic act. Bécquer developed a new intimacy and emotionally charged lyricism. Darío, from Nicaragua, was the perceived leader of the Hispanic modernistas and brought fresh attention to poetic structures and accepted aesthetic models, while Jiménez, initially inspired by both, created poetry of profound philosophical content. All reflect upon what poetry itself means to them and how they pursue its elusive meanings in a striving towards beauty and truth. The written word offers an opportunity to reach outside of their here and now and touch the infinite. The written poetic word, invested with transcendent meaning, attains the status of the ultimate signifier and is a means of making sense of human experience and aspiration.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of the module is to:

• Encourage you to reflect upon how poetry is created and what words truly mean via Bécquer’s ideas on inspiration and composition, Darío’s innovative poetic structures and his rethinking of inherited symbols and classical mythologies, and Jiménez’s awareness of how words are subject to individual experience
• Consider some of the largest philosophical issues contained in western culture via a close reading of poetry that is both easily accessible and intellectually rewarding, and will develop your familiarity with some of that historical culture’s most influential texts
• Examine how the foremost Latin-American poets of their age profoundly influenced the new direction of poetry in Spanish in the early decades of the twentieth century

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a sound understanding of the chosen texts, including reference to their place in the historical / literary / cultural context of their time
• 2. Acquire a firm understanding of the place of these texts in Spanish, broader European, and Latin-American cultural history and aesthetics

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. With some guidance from the course tutor, evaluate and apply a range of critical approaches to the material covered
• 4. Mount a detailed argument in the appropriate register of English, mustering a range of textual or other evidence in its support
• 5. Analyse selected Spanish texts, relating them to significant elements in their cultural / historical / generic context
• 6. Use recommended reference works to compile a bibliography, within given parameters (chronological, thematic, etc) on a specified topic

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Adopt a critical approach to the selection and organisation of material in order to produce, to a deadline, a written or oral argument
• 8. Present a cogent and sustained argument on a topic chosen from a range of options provided, following broad guidelines but selecting and adapting them as required
• 9. Using course material provided, research, plan and write an essay on a chosen aspect of the subject, to a specified length and deadline

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Poetic inspiration and composition understood in metaphysical terms (Lecture)
• The theme of the idealist in search of beauty in Romanticism and modernismo (Lecture)
• Platonic motifs of beauty and love: Plato’s Symposium in Spanish poetry (Lecture)
• Links with Plato’s Phaedo and the immortality of the soul in Spanish verse (Lecture)
• A sympathetic natural landscape: beyond ‘pathetic fallacy’ (Lecture)
• The primacy of the other-worldly in Bécquer (Seminars)
• Bécquer’s impossible idealism (Seminars)
• The immediacy of Darío’s use of classical mythology (Seminars)
• Darío’s employment of new poetic structures (Seminars)
• Jiménez’s elusive ideal (Seminars)
• Jiménez’s apprehension of the immortal (Seminars)

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment. 

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rimas (any edition)
• Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, ‘cartas literarias a una mujer’
• Rubén Darío, Cantos de vida y esperanza (any edition)
• Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antolojía poética (e.g. Alianza Editorial, 2002)
• Plato, Extracts from The Symposium (Penguin Classics)
• Plato, ‘Phaedo’, in The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics)
• Percy B. Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ and ‘On Love’ in any edition of his prose works

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=6778 

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• An anthology of further material will be made available to students

Key words search

Poetry, Spain, Latin America