SPN.5014 Magic Realism Writers
This course explores some of the key texts written since the New World was discovered and during the colonial period. Students will study the different ways in which the new continent and its inhabitants entered into the European imagination. Texts to be analyzed are some of the pre-Columbian indigenous myths, the initial account of the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds by Christopher Columbus, the description of the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, the history of the Incas as described by the Mestizo Garcilaso de la Vega, the epic account of the war with the Araucanian Indians by Ercilla, some selections of Indian and Mestizo chroniclers representing the vision of the vanquished, and, finally, Sor Juana's poetry and prose.