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Between 2014 and 2017 I authored an annotated anthology of Spanish literature focused on the theme of Romantic legends and archetypes. The anthology is intended for upper-division American students of Spanish language, literature and culture. It contains poetry, short story and drama in verse by nine authors form the late 18th Century through the early 20th Century. When preparing a course on this topic, I found that there was no arranged set of texts for teaching about these themes. The book combines pertinent visual imagery with remarkable literary texts organized under a thesis of ascending bourgeois consciousness and republican movements. The goal of the textbook and the course is to teach students about the Romantic aesthetic, its tropes and archetypes, and their manipulation for social and political purposes, while enabling them to recognize these schema in modern cultural narratives.
The textbook begins with a substantial introduction to literary movements, art, and society in Spain in the 19th Century with special recognition of Goya. The literary texts are accompanied by images of paintings, drawings and prints and by film frames to illustrate the themes being treated. Most of the images are period appropriate, having been created during the Romantic movement. The images include alternative text descriptions for the visually impaired as well as visual interpretations. Vocabulary comprehension is facilitated by over 4000 margin notes and footnotes, and there are many historical annotations as well. Each author is briefly presented, with comments on their biography, best known works, and the work selected for this anthology. Each literary piece is followed by comprehension questions and research-based discussion questions.
All of the images included are either in the public domain, available through fair use, or were made available by permission of the artist. All of the images were retrieved electronically via the world wide web or email. All of the literary texts included are in the public domain. I used the oldest editions available electronically, some from the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes or from the Instituto Cervantes, as well as other libraries in Europe, but mostly from the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Spanish National Library. I consulted multiple editions to eliminate typographic errors and I modernized the spelling (eg. eliminating accent marks on fé, á, ó, etc.). I typeset the book in Adobe InDesign because I prefer its interface for text, margin and footnotes, and images. The book is set for 8.5” x 11” pages so that students may economically print them. I require students to print the text for use in class, which they do in black and white, and in class I project the images in color. I used Adobe Photoshop to lighten each image so that they don’t print too darkly in black and white.
I received a small grant for the Portland State Library which allowed me to pay honoraria to three professional reviewers of the first edition, two native Spanish speakers and one native English speaker, one of them being a tenure-track professor at my university and two of them being tenure-track at other universities. I added the vocabulary and historical notes, and the comprehension questions, in the second edition and hired a native Spanish speaking proof reader. It took me approximately 1000 hours to prepare the 1st and 2nd editions.