AP® Spanish Language and Culture review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/spanish/units/3/3-5)
Unit 3 · Topic 3.5
3.5 Literature (Literatura)
Writers from Spain and Latin America shaped world literature, from Cervantes's Don Quijote and the poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to the Latin American Boom and magical realism. Literary texts are one of the reading task types on the exam, so you also need the tools for reading fiction: narrator, tone, tense and figurative language.
Key terms
- la novela
- la poesía
- el Siglo de Oro
- el realismo mágico
- el boom latinoamericano
- el narrador
The Golden Age and Don Quijote
El Siglo de Oro, roughly the 16th and 17th centuries, was Spain's golden age of literature. The anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) launched the picaresque novel, in which a poor rogue tells how he survived. Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca, author of La vida es sueño, filled the theaters.
Miguel de Cervantes published Don Quijote in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. It's often called the first modern novel. Alonso Quijano reads so many tales of knights that he decides to become one, Don Quijote, and rides out with his practical squire, Sancho Panza; in the most famous scene, he charges at windmills he believes are giants. The book plays with illusion and reality, and quijotesco now means idealistic to the point of being impractical. Its first line is one of the best known in Spanish: «En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo…» Cervantes died in 1616, and April 23 is celebrated as Book Day (el Día del Libro).
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Sor Juana (about 1648–1695) lived in New Spain, colonial Mexico. Brilliant from childhood, she became a nun, in part because convent life let her study and keep a large library. She wrote poetry and plays, and in her Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz (1691) she defended women's right to learn. Her poem «Hombres necios que acusáis» criticizes men who blame women for the very behavior men encourage. She was called “the Tenth Muse” (la Décima Musa).
From modernismo to the Boom
Modernismo, led by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (Azul…, 1888), was the first literary movement born in Latin America to influence Spain. The Cuban José Martí was another key figure. In the 20th century came poets such as Federico García Lorca in Spain, and Gabriela Mistral of Chile became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945.
The Boom latinoamericano of the 1960s and 1970s brought Latin American novels to readers worldwide: Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963), Mario Vargas Llosa's La ciudad y los perros (1963) and, above all, Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (1967). García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in 1982, and Vargas Llosa in 2010.
El realismo mágico (magical realism) tells extraordinary events in a calm, matter-of-fact voice inside a realistic world. In Cien años de soledad a young woman simply floats up to heaven while folding sheets in the garden. Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (1955) and Alejo Carpentier's idea of lo real maravilloso came before it. Not all Latin American writing is magical realism, though.
Reading a literary text
First, figure out who is telling the story: a first-person narrator (narrador en primera persona) who is part of the story, or a third-person, all-knowing narrator (narrador omnisciente). Then mark the words that carry feeling; they reveal tone. Notice the tenses: the imperfect sets the scene and describes what used to happen, while the preterite moves the plot forward. Older texts use vosotros forms and old spellings, like lantejas for lentejas in Don Quijote.
- el personaje (character), la trama (plot), el desenlace (ending)
- el tema (theme), el tono (tone), el ambiente (setting, atmosphere)
- la metáfora (metaphor), el símil or la comparación (simile)
- el verso (line of poetry), la estrofa (stanza), el cuento (short story)
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Interpreting a simile and the narrator's view
Texto escrito para esta práctica. «Cuando mi abuelo cerró la librería, no lloró. Guardó los libros en cajas, uno por uno, como quien acuesta a sus hijos. A mí me dio el último ejemplar que quedaba en el escaparate, un Quijote con las esquinas dobladas. “Para que no se te olvide que los sueños también pesan”, me dijo. Yo tenía doce años y no entendí nada. Hoy, cada vez que abro ese libro, lo entiendo un poco más.» ¿Qué sugiere la comparación «como quien acuesta a sus hijos»? (A) Que el abuelo estaba cansado y quería dormir. (B) Que el abuelo trataba los libros con cariño y cuidado. (C) Que el abuelo tenía muchos hijos. (D) Que el abuelo estaba enojado con sus libros.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Spot the simile: «como quien…» means “like someone who…”. The grandfather packs books the way a parent puts children to bed.
- Step 2: Ask what that action suggests: tenderness, care and a sense of saying goodnight, or goodbye.
- Step 3: Check the context. «No lloró» shows he held back his feelings, and «uno por uno» shows patience. Nothing suggests tiredness (A) or anger (D), and (C) takes the comparison literally.
- Step 4: Notice the narrator too: an adult looking back on age twelve (Yo tenía doce años… Hoy… lo entiendo un poco más). The shift in tense from past to present shows the meaning grew over time, which is the kind of point a perspective question asks about.
Answer: (B) Que el abuelo trataba los libros con cariño y cuidado.
Common mistakes
- Assuming the narrator is the author. A first-person narrator is a character with a point of view.
- Labeling every Latin American novel magical realism. Many are realist, political, historical or experimental.
- Mixing up periods: the Siglo de Oro is Spain in the 1500s and 1600s; the Boom is Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Taking a figure of speech literally, as with a simile like «como quien acuesta a sus hijos».
On the exam
- Each source on the exam opens with a short line in Spanish that says what it's about (Este texto trata de…). Read it first: for a literary text, it gives you the setting and the speaker before you start. Questions ask about the narrator's attitude, the meaning of a phrase in context and the theme.
- When a question asks what a phrase suggests, choose the answer that fits the whole passage's tone, not just the literal words.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
5 questions on 3.5 Literature (Literatura). Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Rubén Darío, «El rey burgués», en Azul... (1888); texto de la edición de Obras completas, vol. IV, Madrid, Mundo Latino
¿Qué efecto tiene la lista de personas a las que favorece el rey en el párrafo 1?
En el párrafo 2, ¿qué función tienen las frases sueltas «Buen gusto» y «Refinamiento»?
¿Cómo trata el rey al poeta cuando lo conoce?
Según el poeta, ¿cómo es el verdadero arte?
¿Qué critica el cuento?
0 of 5 answered