On the teaching of Spanish literature

Abstract

Of the various methods followed in teaching, we shall refer first of all to the most common, which consists in the chronological teaching of the subject, by successive presentation of authors, works and a judgment on them, grouped in the century in which they lived; the task is repeated for each period and as many sectors of genres are presented as entities in themselves. In this way, the matter loses its full sense of unity, breaking the internal link that unites all the manifestations of a genre throughout the centuries. This method makes the study anodyne, the great figures are reduced to a lower level for reasons of time, and at the end of the academic year, the student only remembers a catalog of names, without logical connection; he studied the Archpriest of Talavera in the first classes of the year, and returns to study Quevedo, after having passed through his mind to mystics, lyricists and playwrights; and of the passage from the prose of Talavera to Quevedo, he knows nothing.