Hmm
Which essay to choose?
Essay Topics
1. Daniela Flesler argues that in our contemporary period, ‘if Spaniards have difficulty in welcoming Moroccan immigrants [. . .] it is not because of the immigrants’ cultural differences, as many argue, but because, like the Moriscos [and the Mudéjares before them] they are not different enough. Like Freud’s uncanny, or Derrida’s spectres, Moroccans become for Spaniards the return of the repressed.’ (Flesler 2008: 9). How far might your study EITHER of ‘Spain of the three cultures’ OR of state and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bear out Flesler’s claim? What was repressed? Why?
2. Anne Cruz argues that in Lazarillo de Tormes, ‘Lazarillo’s story remarks on the beginnings of an alienated social force that will not be contained’. John Beverley argues that the text can be read ‘either as the satire of a proletariat in formation and its desire to climb the economic ladder, or as a criticism of the church and a hierarchical society.’ Which of these arguments do you find most convincing? Why?
3. The stability of a political system and of the power and authority of rulers, in Pierre Bourdieu’s words, ‘is best sustained when it is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order’. To what extent do Velázquez’s and El Greco’s images of power in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain fit this description?
4. Goya’s late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century art has been described by Gwynn Williams as the representation of a ‘necessary but impossible revolution’. To what extent might the Goya images you have studied fit this description? And to what extent might the representation of later nineteenth-century life in Alas’s ‘Adiós, Cordera’ also fit this description?
In other news, I have officially done some work, which for me is very impressive, and my life is more easily followed on Facebook these days. I heart Facebook.
I don't know how to feel about this whole Mark situation though. Well, I think I should still be upset, but I'm only sort of upset because I still like him, but I don't love him. And I think I was just in love with what we had before. I don't think we got that back when we got back together in October.
Such is.
Anyhoooooo I should think about getting up and going to Management, but if people get bored then drop me a text :)
Love love!!
Essay Topics
1. Daniela Flesler argues that in our contemporary period, ‘if Spaniards have difficulty in welcoming Moroccan immigrants [. . .] it is not because of the immigrants’ cultural differences, as many argue, but because, like the Moriscos [and the Mudéjares before them] they are not different enough. Like Freud’s uncanny, or Derrida’s spectres, Moroccans become for Spaniards the return of the repressed.’ (Flesler 2008: 9). How far might your study EITHER of ‘Spain of the three cultures’ OR of state and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bear out Flesler’s claim? What was repressed? Why?
2. Anne Cruz argues that in Lazarillo de Tormes, ‘Lazarillo’s story remarks on the beginnings of an alienated social force that will not be contained’. John Beverley argues that the text can be read ‘either as the satire of a proletariat in formation and its desire to climb the economic ladder, or as a criticism of the church and a hierarchical society.’ Which of these arguments do you find most convincing? Why?
3. The stability of a political system and of the power and authority of rulers, in Pierre Bourdieu’s words, ‘is best sustained when it is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order’. To what extent do Velázquez’s and El Greco’s images of power in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain fit this description?
4. Goya’s late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century art has been described by Gwynn Williams as the representation of a ‘necessary but impossible revolution’. To what extent might the Goya images you have studied fit this description? And to what extent might the representation of later nineteenth-century life in Alas’s ‘Adiós, Cordera’ also fit this description?
In other news, I have officially done some work, which for me is very impressive, and my life is more easily followed on Facebook these days. I heart Facebook.
I don't know how to feel about this whole Mark situation though. Well, I think I should still be upset, but I'm only sort of upset because I still like him, but I don't love him. And I think I was just in love with what we had before. I don't think we got that back when we got back together in October.
Such is.
Anyhoooooo I should think about getting up and going to Management, but if people get bored then drop me a text :)
Love love!!