Senior Seminar: One Hundred Years of Solitude, A Bilingual Reading

This course, open to all, follows a Great Books approach to Gabriel García Márquez's opus One Hundred Years of Solitude. Over the course of ten weeks, we will study this singular work attending to structural, intertextual, and contextual elements, situating the novel within its Colombian, Latin American, and World literary heritage. We will examine side-by-side the Spanish original and Gregory Rabassa's English translation. Students should be able to follow along in basic Spanish, but are welcome to conduct most of their coursework in English. A concurrent Spanish section will be offered for those who want to discuss in the language and improve their linguistic skills. Lectures will provide an overview of relevant secondary bibliography, but the main focus will be close reading and analysis. At the end of the course, students will have developed their proficiency as literary critics and formulated an informed perspective on literary translation. They will also come up with their own articulate position about the relationship between imagination and power, a major theme in this milestone of the sixties. ILAC Seniors will have regular supplementary meetings with the instructor to craft a capstone essay in the target language. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.