Literary Picaros and Picaras and their Travels in Early Modern Spain

FAIN: FV-50216-09

University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL 33146-2919)
Anne J. Cruz (Project Director: March 2009 to March 2011)

A four-week school teacher seminar for sixteen participants on the picaresque literature of early modern Spain, to be held in Salamanca, Toledo, Sevilla, and Madrid, and conducted in Spanish.

"Literary Picaros and Picaras and their Travels in Early Modern Spain" is a four-week seminar mainly for school teachers of Spanish language and Spanish literature. In the seminar we will read and analyze the most famous picaresque novels of 16th and 17th Century Spain whose protagonists are poor young boys (and occasionally girls) known as picaros and whose lives reflected the poverty and tensions that occurred in Spain during this period. All seminar lectures will be in Spanish and will take place at the actual locations where the picaros and picaras lived and traveled: Madrid, Salamanca, Toledo, and Sevilla. Participants will have occasion to tour museums, churches, and other historical sites to learn the culture of early modern Spain. Participants will be expected to give an oral presentation during the seminar and complete a course project they may utilize in the classroom.