Blount Undergraduate Initiative College of Arts & Sciences The University of Alabama

The Individual and Society in Spanish Expressive Culture A Blount Undergraduate Initiative Sophomore Seminar

BUI 301-001 Spring, 2001   Tuesdays,  3:00 – 5:30 p.m.   Oliver-Barnard Hall

COURSE DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES This examination of the expressive culture of Spain is organized around the complicated relationship between the individual and the various collectivities of which he or she is a member. The dialectic of the individual and the social in works of Spanish art can be approached from many different perspectives.  This multidisciplinary course of seminars and readings (amply supplemented by listening to music, scrutinizing art and watching films and video) will consider how this central relationship plays out in a number of distinct, but always related and interacting, domains of Spanish culture: art, music, dance, literature, film, and festivity.

READINGS (see Course Schedule below for reading sequence)

• John Hooper (1995) The New Spaniards. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN: 0140131914.

•  Anonymous (1996)  The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes. J. Gerald Markley, translator. (Library of Liberal Arts 37). Prentice Hall; ISBN: 0023761601.

• Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1988) Adventures of Don Quixote.  J.M. Cohen, translator. New York: Penguin. ISBN: 0140440100.   

•  José Zorrilla (1999) Don Juan Tenorio.  Distribooks Intl. ISBN: 8441000514. 

• A photocopied compilation of required articles and book chapters is available at the University Supply Store.

WEB RESOURCES

• Web Resources for BUI 301  Check out the extensive list of web sites relevant to this course.

 Course Requirements

ATTENDANCE POLICY Attendance at every class meeting is a non-negotiable requirement.  Excessive absences will result in the lowering of the final grade. Note that deductions for poor attendance will be made apart from the evaluation of class participation. 

PROMPTNESS AND PUNCTUALITY All class assignments must be completed on schedule or the grade will suffer. Please show up for seminar on time having read the assigned materials. 

CLASS PARTICIPATION  Students will be selected to serve as discussion leaders of particular readings and this task will be evaluated as will general participation in the seminar.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS A short essay (five to seven pages in length) will be due at the end of each of the three major topical segments of the course.  These three essays will be evaluated for the quality of writing, for originality, and for evidence that seminar readings, discussions and viewings were considered.  Essay topics and guidelines will be provided well before each assignment is due. These essays will be due on March 6, April 10, and on May 7, the Monday of finals week.

 GRADING  Each of the three essays will count for 25% of the course grade.  The remaining 25% will be based on an assessment of the quality of each student’s seminar participation, both generally and as a discussion leader.

Course Organization

This course is divided into four major segments and several “interludes” dedicated to performances of music, dance, and film.

 (1)     Introduction  

The first three meetings will seek, respectively, (1) to  introduce the  students to the content and format of the course, (2) to discuss a number of seminal readings concerning the Individual-Society relationship, (3) to discuss background material on Spanish society and culture that will place subsequent readings in a broader context.  The readings for this segment include Ruth Benedict’s  “The Individual and the Pattern of Culture, “ José Ortega y Gasset’s “No Men, or No Masses?”, Miguel Unamuno’s  “Spanish Individualism” and selections from John Hooper’s The New Spaniards. 

(2)     First Interlude: Spanish Film  

A showing of "El espiritu de la colmena" by Victor Erice

(3)  The Festive Arts of Spain

Michael Murphy will present a course segment on the folklore of Spain (focusing on Andalusia) that examines the degree to which the vivid festivities of that nation constitute a popular art form in which complex relationships between individuals and collectivities are enacted and contested, often in formats that deftly mix together sacred and secular concerns.

The first seminar, The Folkloric Appropriation of “Spain”  by Andalusia, will discuss the highly controversial phenomenon in which the whole of a society (Spain) has come to be represented by only one of its many parts (Andalusia).  That is, distinctively Andalusian elements of folk life have come to represent the uniqueness of Spain to the outside world, thus both blurring the considerable sociocultural complexity that marks the country and distorting Spain’s individuality within the community of nations.  The readings for this seminar include Ortega’s “Theory of Andalusia,” Graña’s “On Seville,” and Fernandez’s “Andalusia on Our Minds.” Luis García Berlanga’s classic film depicting the Andalusification of Spain, Bienvendios Mr. Marshall, will be shown to seminar participants.

 The second seminar, Semana Santa: The Display of Collective Distinctiveness, is the first of two that will consider the religious procession as a quintessentially Andalusian example of that kind of art form that Ortega ambivalently characterized as “marvelous, popular, and anonymous.” For example, the fifty-seven processions that make up this ritual in Seville deviate from standard liturgical forms in such a way that it manages simultaneously to express a unified Andalusian aesthetic, to portray the differences between the various constituencies of the city, and to allow “anonymous” religious penitents to express their individuality.  The readings for this seminar include David Gregory’s Semana Santa in Seville, and selections from Timothy Mitchell’s Passional Culture.  An evocative depiction of Holy Week in Seville, Semana Santa, will be shown to class participants. 

The third seminar, The Virgin of the Dew, will discuss that Andalusian religious procession which has diverged most radically from Tridentine ecclesiastical standards.   Renowned for its tumult and violence, the Procession of the Virgin has come to epitomize for outsiders the violent assertion of individualism that Unamuno regarded as a serious impediment to Spain’s integration into a modern Europe.  Viewed from the point of view of its participants, however, the procession has emerged as a complex art form that simultaneously expresses local identity, an emergent Andalusian solidarity, and an egalitarian spirit in which each individual competes on a level playing field, free from the class distinctions that normally structure everyday life.  The readings for this seminar are Michael Murphy and Juan Carlos González Faraco’s “Cultural Intensification in an Andalusian Pilgrimage,” Michael Murphy’s  “Class, Community, and Costume in an Andalusian Pilgrimage” and Mary Crain’s “The Remaking of an Andalusian Pilgrimage.”  Peter Luke’s film, La Romería del Rocío, will be screened for the class.

 (4)  Second Interlude:  Spanish Music  

 (5)  The Literature of Spain

José Antonio Cano will present a course segment on the literature of Spain that focuses on classic representations of three culturally constructed forms of Spanish individualism: the rogue, the dreamer, and the immoralist.  That is, the direct representation of Spanish individualism, in all of its manifold expressions, will be shown to be a recurrent element in many of the greatest examples of Spanish literary art.  At the end of this segment, the present role of the Spanish preoccupation with strong individualism, stoicism and the studied disregard for conventional moral positions will be discussed.

 The first seminar, Individualism and Social Decomposition, will explore the picaresque tradition in Spanish literature by discussing one of its earliest examples, El Lazarillo de Tormes.  In this work a distinctive type of Spanish individualism is depicted in which the trials and challenges of life in the lower social order are met with trickery, with law breaking, and with general roguery.  The reading for this seminar is El Lazarillo de Tormes in its entirety.

 The second seminar, Realism versus Idealism, will consider the famous Don Quijote as the quintessential Spanish dreamer.  Selections from Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece will be read for this seminar.

 The third seminar, Social Defiance, will examine the Spanish individual as an immoralist unconcerned with social norms that stand in the way of personal satisfaction.  Discussion will center on the classic figure of Don Juan Tenorio, the Seducer of Seville, and the reading will be a selection from José de Zorrilla’s version of the tale of Don Juan.

(6) Third Interlude: Spanish Dance (with Guest Artist, Rita Synder)

(7) The Art of Spain

 Mindy Nancarrow will present a course segment on the art of the  Spanish Golden Age, structured by viewer reception theory.  That is, she will present important works of Spanish secular and religious art to the seminar participants, inviting them to share their own responses and reactions before discussing their changing use-function to Spanish audiences from the late sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries (when they were produced) all the way up to the present.

 The first seminar, Spanish Realism: Fact or Fiction?, introduces students to the much touted Spanish realism style in art.  Our point of departure is Pérez Sánchez’s thesis that Spanish realism is not realism in the true sense, because Spanish artists most often recorded what they did not see, rather than the world around them. Our visual data are veristic devotional sculptures by Martínez Montañes and some outstanding examples of “realistic” painting, including Ribera’s Clubfoot Boy. The readings for this seminar include McKim-Smith’s, “Spanish Polychrome Sculpture and its Critical Misfortunes” and Sullivan’s “Ribera’s Clubfooted Boy: Image and Symbol.”

 The second seminar, Inside the Court of the Planet King, examines how an authoritarian political structure consolidated its power through representations of the king and his immediate royal family.  Spanish court painter Velázquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas, will permit us to situate the individual (artist) within the rigid social structure of his time. The readings will include Elliott’s “Power and Propaganda in the Spain of Philip IV” and Brown’s “On the Meaning of Las Meninas.”

 The third seminar, Religion as a Means of Social Control, will consider how religious images reconfirmed the established gender roles and family structure in order to reproduce the status quo.  We will examine the cult of the Immaculate Conception in paintings by Zurbarán and the representation of the Virgin and the Holy Family by Murillo. The readings for this seminar are Pacheco’s “The Aims of the Christian Artist,” his  “The Iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,” and Perry’s “Virgins, Martyrs, and the Necessary Evil.”

   Web Resources for BUI 301

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Blount Undergraduate Initiative

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