Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Final Blog!

Well here it is, my final blog of the semester! Spanish 365 complemented Spanish 364 well. Spanish 364 was a course primarily concerned with understanding the importance of historical documents (for example, las cartas que mandó Hernán Cortés al Rey de España en que escribió sobre sus aventuras en América) while Spanish 365 took over from the conquest literature and focused on how each country in Latin America (well.. South America) created its own identity by way of creating its own literature. In the first part of the course, we jumped around quite a bit and studied one piece of literature for each country in South America. In the second half of this course we focused primarily on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel Cien Años de Soledad. Allotting this amount of time for analysis was nice because we could analyze the work closer and therefore learn more, not only about the book but also about Colombia in general. The books we studied throughout the course were well chosen. I especially like the poetry of Pablo Neruda titled, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. It was very interesting to hear a recording of the author himself reading the poem aloud. My favorite piece of literature that we studied this semester is Las Hortensias by Felisberto Hernández. This book definitely caught my attention, and held it throughout. Check out my Hortensias blog, if you want to know why. Cien Años de Soledad definitely lived up to the hype in my books. For me, it was the ending that did it. I can totally see how many people have said that they started the book and failed to finish it. Firstly, it’s quite a long book if you are used to reading books like Paulo Cuelho’s “The Alquemist” (as I am) but mostly I think the author loses many readers confusing them with the names. I know we’ve already talked about the act of naming in this book, but really I think that it bogs the reader down and gets in the way of understanding and enjoying this book. All I can say is that the family tree is key ... maybe the publishers should include a little bio on each character too? Haha, to be honest I’m still very confused, and I think it’s just going to be that way, until I read it again. Crap, we still have a final exam! Wikipedia here I come! Anyways this class has been fun. Good books. Hortensias, Neruda, Cien Años, do I have to say any more? What was your favorite book of the course?