Reception of Latin in Americas

Catalog description

This course will explore the reception in colonial Mexico of the Ovidian Latin poetry centred on the theme of exile, tackling also related topics such as displacement, nostalgia, geographical discoveries, the encounter with the Other, barbarity, linguistic and national identity. Class activity will involve the close reading of a selection of pieces, literary and not, which we shall intersect with a survey of the historical circumstances that shaped the three colonial centuries of Mexico (from the 16th to the 19th). Departing from this core, we shall follow the several lines of our enquiry along their path from the Old to the New World (and back to the Old) —to eventually end up exploring the possibility that literature itself (as much as other arts) might serve as a viable means to find some comfort for the exilic distress.