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SOCY 151 - Lecture 2 - Hobbes: Authority, Human Rights and Social Order

An examination of Hobbes’s lifetime reveals that the uncertainty of the British monarchy during his life (1588-1679) inspires Hobbes’s social and political thought, especially regarding the role of the sovereign to provide for the security of his subjects. We consider the major elements of Hobbes’s political and social thought including the state of nature, equality of men, the social contract, the strong sovereign, and legitimate rule.

SOCY 151 - Lecture 1 - Introduction

Professor Szelényi introduces the course to the students. Then he introduces each social thinker we will cover in the course: Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, and Durkheim. He provides an overview of their biographies, their major works, and their major contributions.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 24 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LXXI-LXXIV (cont.)

Would have Cervantes deserved such recognition, had he not written the Quixote? The answer is no. However, he would probably be remembered for some of his other works. Two of The Exemplary Stories, significantly connected together, are commented in this lecture. “The Deceitful Marriage” deconstructs marriage both as a social institution and as a narrative tool: Cervantes manipulates literary conventions by beginning with what is normally the end of a story, a marriage, and works backwards to undue a union that never took place legitimately.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 23 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LXXI-LXXIV

González Echevarría focuses on the end of the Quixote. He starts referring to Cervantes’ humor, which allows us to see humanity in contrast to the mad hero and thus appreciate everyone’s folly. The novel’s plot, with Don Quixote’s repeated returns home, suggests that life consists of going and coming back, and this is probably why we approach the end by returning to the beginning. In his last return home Don Quixote has conquered himself. By accepting his defeat by the Knight of the White Moon, who is a reflection of himself, he accepts himself for what he is.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 22 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LIV-LXX (cont.)

As we approach the end of the novel, Cervantes compresses and combines elements from different types of romances (morisco, Greek, pastoral) in what seems to be an attempt to create a new literary genre; the modern novel. In the episodes in Barcelona, the prank with the talking head makes literal the figure of prosopopeia; Don Quixote’s visit to the printing shop explores the very origin of the book; the sign the boys hang on Don Quixote’s back also reduces him to language.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 20 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXXVI-LIII (cont.)

According to González Echevarría, Don Quixote’s epic task within the novel is to control his madness by accepting the vanity of his dreams and the futility of his quest. The protagonist’s change started with Sancho’s enchantment of Dulcinea, and peaked in the cave of Montesinos. Now, he displays his deepened wisdom in the counsel to his squire on how to govern the island of Barataria.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 19 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXXVI-LIII

The developments of Part II of the Quixote are based and measured against Part I. In the episode of the afflicted matron, the story about Countess Trifaldi, and Clavileño, we see these expansions (the presence of love and death, the black color, the monsters, the clashing elements, the cross-dressing, the grotesque, the inclusiveness) which reach the limits of representation, in consonance with baroque aesthetics.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 18 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXII-XXXV (cont.)

The fact that the second part of the Quixote is the first political novel is manifested in several ways. The second part adds (taken from the picaresque novel) geographic concreteness to its realistic portrayal of Spanish life and sociopolitical background to the novel: the episode of the boat shows the contrast between Don Quixote’s Ptolemaic obsolete notions of geography and the new Copernican conception of an infinite universe. The duke and duchess represent the Spanish idle upper classes in debt and kept financially afloat through loans, like the Spanish Crown.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 17 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXII-XXXV

This lecture covers two of the most important episodes of Part II of the Quixote: the descent into Montesinos cave and Master Peter’s puppet show. The first one, on the one hand, engages the main literary topics and sources of the novel. Cervantes, by submitting Don Quixote’s fantasies to natural law, questions the belief in the authenticity of the romances of chivalry and the reality of what his protagonist sees.

SPAN 300 - Lecture 16 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XII-XXI (cont.)

The loose format of the Quixote allows for the incorporation of different stories and texts, such as the Camacho’s wedding, which was going to be a play. The episode, a form of epithalamium based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, states one of the main themes of part two, that art corrects nature. As a way of turning deceit, which would normally lead to disillusionment, into a happy ending, in Camacho’s wedding episode art helps nature to attain good ending.

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