Module description
This module will explore memory in Spanish culture both as a collective and personal experience, through the study of literary texts, painting and/or film under three broad and related themes: (1) Historical memory and national identity; (2) Memory and trauma; and (3) Memory and authorship. In the process it will invite students to consider the ways in which certain cultural products in modern Spain act to memorialise historical events and figures; or the ways in which others serve to recuperate a past once wilfully forgotten; or the ways some problematize memory as in, for example, the use of an unreliable narrator; or the ways in which they express the value of clinging to personal memories or, conversely, the pain and trauma of having to remember at all. As well as being a personal concern for individual writers, filmmakers and artists, the idea of memory has far-reaching implications for a nation whose turbulent history has brought with it the imperatives to remember, misremember and forget.
Assessment details
One 2000 word tutorial essay (40%); One 2000 word final essay (60%)
Learning outcomes
At the end of the module students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practical skills appropriate to a Level 5 module, and in particular they will be able to:
- Identify key features relating to memory in examples of art, literature and/or film, including the relevance to/of the historical context
- Analyse and manipulate a conceptual framework for describing the treatment and/or function of memory in examples of art, literature and/or film
- Effectively discuss, examine and respond to debates around memory as it applies to culture
- Begin to develop appropriate autonomous research strategies in order to plan, draft, author and complete module assessment
Teaching pattern
Two hours per week
Suggested reading list
- A selection of Antonio Machado’s poems
- Víctor Erice’s film El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive
- Rosa Montero’s novel, Crónica del desamor (Absent Love)
- Pedro Almodóvar’s film Madres paralelas/Parallel Mothers
A bilingual edition of selected poems by Antonio Machado is available online via King’s College Library:
- Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, trans. by Robert W. Bly (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)
Students are expected to own copies of the following texts and/or of their translations:
- Rosa Montero’s novel, Crónica del desamor (Absent Love)