Author Description

Reflexiones is a rich literary anthology, spanning several centuries and including nearly every major writer of Spain and Latin America. Reflexiones offers an introduction to Hispanic literature focused on training students to understand and analyze literary texts, genres, and period concepts. This program places Hispanic literature within the broad framework of the humanities as well as the historical and cultural context of its creation. Reflexiones is more than an anthology; the book helps students learn how to analyze and appreciate literature and to recognize the relationship of the featured texts to cultural manifestations and the relevance to their own lives. This is accomplished through five subdivisions within each selection, meant to expand upon the reading: La literatura y la vida, En contexto, Para comprender, Para interpretar and Cultura, conexiones y comparaciones. After using this book, readers should be able to: • Improve their literary criticism skills - Reflexiones introduces students to literary criticism through short passages of critical observations from scholars. They are then asked to explain them or to agree or take issue with the commentary.• Better analyze Spanish literature thematically - The reading selections in Reflexiones are focused around six fundamental themes: social reality, gender issues, time and space, human relationships, and the complexity of existence as well as that of literary creation.• Place readings within a cultural and chronological context - Within each chapter of the book, the selections are subdivided into three cultural and historical periods: the Medieval era, the Renaissance (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), and the modern era (nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries)