Course 1: Literature in English. WEDNESDAY 10.30 – 12.00 or 19.00 – 20.30
- MARCH: Paul Auster:Moon Palace.
- APRIL: Truman Capote:Breakfast at Tiffany’s.*
- APRIL: Christopher Isherwood:Goodbye to Berlin (a.k.a. Cabaret).*
- MAY: Graham Greene:Brighton Rock.*
- JULY: Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre.*
- AUG: Jean Rhys:Wide Sargasso Sea.*
- OCT: Chinua Achebe:Things Fall Apart.
- NOV: Ben Okri:The Famished Road.
- DEC: Zadie Smith:White Teeth.
- * Includes movie.
Course 2: Shakespeare and Company. MONDAY 19.00 – 20.30
Curso 3: Jorge Luis Borges: un recorrido temático. MARTES 19.00 – 20.30 o VIERNES DE 10.30 – 12.00
Literature in English: 2012 presents a varied array of literature in English from three continents. North America comes first, in February with the ‘minimalist’ stories of one of the greatest short story writers of the 20th Century and all time, Raymond Carver; and in March and April with two quintessentially New York stories: Paul Auster’s harrowingMoon Palace and Truman Capote’s enchantingBreakfast at Tiffany’s, whose heroine Holly Golightly was immortalized by Audrey Hepburn in the film version. April also features another girl famous for her light goings about, but this time in Berlin: Isherwood’s Sally Bowles, who was likewise made famous, this time by Liza Minelli, in a film: Bob Fosse’sCabaret. With Christopher Isherwood we have moved to continental Europe, and that’s but a leap to England, where Graham Greene’s ferocious story of a tormented Catholic gangster,Brighton Rock, is set. July takes us back in time to the famedJane Eyre, who needs no introduction I’m sure. But her novel is our (rather lengthy, I’ll admit) introduction to the slender but intenseWide Sargasso Sea, Dominica-born Jean Rhys’ memorable ‘prequel’ to Brontë’s classic, tracing back Mr. Rochester’s and his first wife’s lives to Jamaica, and featuring themes pertaining to colonial cultures, such as racism and cultural clashes, which reappear in Nigerian Chinua Achebe’s realisticThings Fall Apart and in his fellow countryman Ben Okri’s magical-realistThe Famished Road, winner of the 1991 Booker Prize. Addressing related issues, but now in England itself, Zadie Smith follows in her famous first novel,White Teeth (that won a place in TIME’s best 100 English novels from 1923 to 2005) the intertwined destinies of three English families in the new London multi-racial and multi-cultural society, with the addition of the new theme of Islamic fundamentalism.