SPAN 3990 - [More Than Meets the Eye: Spanish Theater and Early Twentieth Century Thought]

(LA-AS) Satisfies option 1.

Spring. 4 credits.

Prerequisite: SPAN 2190, SPAN 3110, or CASE Q++ or permission of instructor. Next offered 2014-2015.

Staff.

On the basic premise that ideas can appear to us onstage and on screen just as productively as they can be found on the pages of a book, this course proposes a study of various leitmotifs in 20th century Western thought through a series of analyses of Spanish theater plays placed in dialogue with texts and films from the period. In this vein, we will focus on a selection of works by major playwrights such as Unamuno (El Otro, 1926), García Lorca (El público, 1933), Casona (La sirena varada, 1929), or Valle-Inclán (Luces de Bohemia, 1920). Our perspectives on the plays will be enriched by texts like Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Breton’s Surrealist Manifestoes, and Marx’s and Engel’s Communist Manifesto, as well as by films such as Un chien andalou (Dalí and Buñuel, 1929), Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931), and Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936).