Written and Oral Traditions in Spanish Literature

FAIN: FB-12358-74

Elias L. Rivers
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD 21218-2608)

Seminar will approach familiar literary texts from a new point of view which may be characterized roughly as sociolinguistic. Initial readings will be concerned with the functions or oral language in illiterate societies, and the impact made upon these functions by the introduction of a system of writing. Keeping in mind the complex interactions within a dual system of oral and written languages (diglossia) Alfred Lord's The Singer of Tales will be read as well as studies in the Lord tradition, concerning medieval epic poems in Spanish. The influence of humanistic models (the classical written Latin) upon written and spoken Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries will be studied and 20th century writers concerned with questions of language.