Guía de estudio para el semestral de Great Universal Writters. Temas resumidos de tercer semestre.

1. MODULE 1
Topic 1: introduction to Epic genre
Originally, the epic genre narrated historical facts of a nation but exhilarated the heroes. Told
through large poems (verses).
Purposes: promote the ancestors, convey from one generation to another.
Epic = synonym for narrative.
Characteristics:
 Mix fantasy with reality at the same level.
 Verbally spread. (aedos recited).
 Invocation to a muse at the beginning of the text.
 Epithets: a phrase that functions as an adjective.
 The Gods coexist with humans. Greek texts (Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Ares, and Aphrodite).
 Ornate language, and a lot of literary figures, such as comparisons.
 Enumeration: literary figure used to mention something in more detail.
Story: what happens within the text
Literary discourse: process in which the language is comprehended it has an author (tells it), an
event (what is it), and a receiver (the reader). Can be in verse and prose.
- Verse: has rhythm, cadence, measurement and is written in lines (it may not have rhyme).
- Prose: everyday speech, has a common structure and doesn’t have verse or rhyme.
Theme: non-explicit central idea.
Topic 2: Epopee and epic
Epopee: subgenre in which the story is told in verses. E.g.: the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata,
the Ramayana, the Iliad, and the Odyssey.
MODULE 3
Topic 11 : Modernismo
Led by the crisis at the end of XIX, the industrial rev., life revolving around science, art no longer
having patrons, The French Parnassian poets, new republics in America and the preference Latin
America developed for Europe.
José Emilio Pacheco – Anthology of Modernismo.
This literature will seek "a complete renovation of the language, a total reform of the
Spanish prosody, a new aesthetic of freedom opposed to the tyranny of the Academy that founds in
rules of the present, the masterpiece of the past (Pacheco, 1999)."
Characteristics:
- Started by the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío
- Influenced by: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Stephane Mallarme,
Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Eugenio de Castro, and the Archpriest of Hita: Berceo.
- Schools were denied.
- Primarily Hispanic but eventually a phenomenon.
- Poetry was THE thing.
- Talked about exotic stuff and turned them into stereotypes.
- No rules.
- Literature without nationality.
- Topics: distant cultures, transcendence, and being cosmopolitan.

2. Rubén Darío (67-16): Nicaraguan, started in newspapers at 15, in 1888 published Azul. Influenced
by France. Prosas Profanas (1896) mixes classic, the Spanish and imagination.
Amado Nervo (70-19): offers a deep admiration fo the beauty. El Bachilller (1894), En voz baja
(1909), Serenidad (1912) and La amada inmóvil (1920) Topics: love and death influenced by the
death of his wife.
José Juan Tablada (71-45): Mexican poet who experimented with poetic forms and figures.
Precursor of the avant-garde. Influenced by a journey to Japan in 1900, where he was marveled by
Japanese poetry. Several of his books have oriental trends, such as Al sol y bajo la luna (1918), Li
Po y otros poemas (1920) and El jarro de las flores (1922).
Topic 12: Avant-garde
Europe, XX century, First and Second World War (1914-1939), through the manifests, established
rules, denied its historical past, and tried to renew the literature. It turned the objects into a pure
idea, using novel terms, often invented. Picasso and Dali were part of it,
Techniques:
Stream of consciousness; the author expresses his thoughts and ideas without having order.
Example: Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
Interior monologue: debate and inner thoughts of a character.
Automatic writing: used by the poet Andre Breton.
Characteristics:
Expressionism (Germany,1905, expresses that art arises from the emotional and spiritual
experience. Expressed concern in religion, society, and feelings. Die Brucke).
Futurism (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1878-1944) who spread this movement. He was born from
the rebellion of the XIX century, celebrated by the philosophy of Nietzsche and an anarchist
atmosphere. Free to the men and makes his future).
Dadaism (born with Tristan Tzara (96-63). An anti-dogmatism movement, that attacked traditions
and was against eternal beauty and purity of the abstract. Its last period was in Paris and
subsequently became surrealism).
Surrealism (1924 with Andre Breton (96-62). Anti-rational, spontaneous, and accidental sense, but
supposed a rational attitude. Sought the truth, solved the problem of existence, and showed all
forms of expressions. Subconscious, unconscious, the dreams and the imagination. Breton read
Freud. Proposes a revolution against institutions and philosophies).
Ultraist (metaphor as a primary element of literary expression. Rafael Cansinos-Assens reflected
this movement, El Candelabro de los siete brazo (1914). America- Jorge Luis Borges (who later
would deny its origins). Ultraist goals:
- Reduction of the lyric element.
- Deletion of useless middle sentences, linking particles and adjectives.
- Avoidance of ornamental artifacts.
- Synthesis of two or more images into one.
Creationism (based on abstraction. Chilean Vicente Huidobro expresses that the literary work is
fully autonomous. Stop trying to imitate nature. Poetry should generate naturally).
Stridentism (Mexican movement exalts the dynamic nature of the modern world. Forget the logic
of linking words and all anecdotal description, seeking to relate terms far away from each other).
De Stijl (group of artists founded in 1917 by Mondrian and Van Does burg in Leiden, it aimed to
disseminate the principles of neoplasticism. Started to decompose the forms down. Its rational).
Topic 13: Science fiction, horror fiction, and detective fiction: Notebook

3. Topic 14: Postmodernism
Techniques:
Contradiction Often the characters in the texts end up contradicting ideals and standards.
Permutation The writers are not limited to one narrative form. Chuck Palahniuk uses: diaries, the story
is told backwards or characters use broken English.
Discontinuity The text can have changes in tone, making the texts unpredictable.
Randomness If the text has an absurd logic, the facts will occur without any sense.
Excess Texts took their proposals to the limit and usually ended in chaos or destruction.
Works:
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
It is a novel in which Billy Pilgrim, who once was an optometrist, is captured by the Germans in a
battle of the Second World War.
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Follows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in Dublin for a day. One of his chapters is known due
to the use of interior monologue. The book has a parallel with Homer's Odyssey.
Topic 15: Latin American boom
The writers were from different countries, they weren’t linked by any thematic intention or style,
they wanted to renew literature and find an identity. In 1960 readers emerged, due to Latin
America’s entering capitalism. The sale of books, therefore, increased.
“Los Anales de Buenos Aires”, by Jorge Luis Borges, was the first to publish one of Julio Cortazar’s
short stories.
Qualitative changes in the sociological part of the literary practice, affecting the publishing part,
new audiences, and increasingly sophisticated forms of distribution made it popular.
For Mario Vargas Llosa, this movement was rather was an "accident".
An important part that made Latin texts to be representative: time management.
There are two types of time, according to Correa (2004):
Time is more internal than external. Outer time is chronological. But inner time tells each
event, every thought, every feeling, and every experience while doing each action.
Examples:
- Juan Rulfo (Pedro Páramo is not chronological).
- Virginia Woolf (The waves, we read the thoughts)
- James Joyce (Ulysses uses stream of consciousness).
Works:
Where the Air Is Clear, by Carlos Fuentes, describes Mexico City.
Aura uses the second person of the singular.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is about the Buendia family. This
novel uses magic realism.
Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch talks about the intellectual life of Horacio Oliveira, first in Paris and
then in Argentina. At the beginning, the author offers two options: read traditionally or follow the
route given by the author.