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‘The Spanish Golden Age’?

Primary Sources
Read an excerpt from a picaresque novel. Suggestions:
Anonimo, Lazarillo de Tormes (multiple editions and translations available)
Cervantes, M. Don Quixote (multiple editions and translations available).
Tirso de Molina, The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest: El Burlador de Sevilla y el Convidado de Piedra

What other representations of the Spanish ‘golden age’ can you think of?

Core readings
Echevarría, Roberto González, Myth and archive: a theory of Latin American narrative (Durham, 1998), chapter 4, the novel as myth and archive, ebook available.
Kamen, H., Golden Age Spain (Palgrave, 2004), Chapter 4, Did Spain Decline, pp. 40-56, Chapter 6, Was Spain Different? Society and Culture in the Golden Age, pp. 70-86.

Further Readings
Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain, Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week (Princeton, 1998).
Parr, James A., Don Quixote, Don Juan, and related subjects: form and tradition in Spanish literature, 1330-1630 (Susquehanna, 2004).

Key Questions
• How did the Spanish Empire change the cultural life of the Iberian Peninsula?
• What were the cultural features of the Spanish Golden Age? What were its highlights?
• What is a picaresque novel? Why did they become popular in golden age Spain?
• Who were the winners and losers of New World wealth?

Historiographical themes: art and literature