The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: Culture, Conquest, and Legacy
Rome and its Empire
The history of Rome unfolded in three main stages:
Etruscan Monarchy
Initially, the Italian Peninsula was inhabited by various peoples. Around 753 BC, the Etruscans imposed their rule, forcing the primitive inhabitants into submission. The first king of Rome was Romulus. The Romans disliked the Etruscans.
Roman Republic
Around 509 BC, the subjugated peoples, including the Latins, rebelled against the Etruscans. This led to the establishment of a republic, governed by magistrates and
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**Spanish Poetry: Civil War to Present Day**
**1. Miguel Hernández (Civil War Lyric)**
This is not the generation of poets of ’27 and avant-garde poets.
Themes:
- Love, woman, and son.
- Pain and death: Personal experiences cause suffering and war, whose highest expression is death.
- Life and a better future: Hope.
Stages:
- 1st stage: The Lightning That Doesn’t Stop: The main theme is the inability to fully love. Written in sonnets, it contains Ramon Sijé Elegy (theme: friendship), uses composition and sonnet
Theater and Post-War Literature: Scenarios, Styles, and Key Authors
Theater
- Lighting Scenarios:
- Realistic – Commercial, realism, naturalness, character actor
- Politico – Changing society (Almnes: Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht)
- Of Cruelty – Evils protest against the world (text, music or gestures) unpleasant pictures. (Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud)
- Psychological – Psychological burden of characters trying to transmit things. (Henrik Ibsen)
- Theater of the Absurd – Reflects the absurdity of human existence (incoherent characters, illogical situations) (Luigi Pirandello,
Artistic Movements: Avant-Garde, Novel, and Generation of ’27
Vanguards: Artistic Movements
Also known as “isms,” these movements rejected traditional art forms, advocating experimentation with new themes and expressions. Key movements include:
- Creationism: Hispanic, focused on creating reality within the artwork itself, employing language games.
- Surrealism: Of French origin, aimed to express emotions and subconscious thoughts.
New Novel of the Century
Alongside avant-garde movements, a revolution in novel form and content emerged in Europe:
- Marcel Proust: Analyzed
Cinema and Postwar Catalan Poetry: A Historical Look
Cinema: Its Birth and Evolution
FILM: Born in 1895. The Lumière brothers presented their seventh Lumière cinema. Their first film had a documentary goal. Later, Georges Méliès began using film to tell fictional stories. In 1927, sound and color were incorporated, and film evolved further. Film combines visual and auditory elements (dialogue, music, and sounds).
- Subjective Camera: Alternates between a general shot and a shot from the character’s point of view.
- Voice-over: A character talks about
Alvaro Cunqueiro and Anxeles Bellows: Galician Literature
Alvaro Cunqueiro’s Narrative
In the novels and short stories by Alvaro Cunqueiro, we find an originalísima mixture of reality and fantasy. In each of his books, fantastic characters coexist with other facts that might well be part of everyday life.
The characters of his works are, in many cases, the old myths of other cultures. So, in Merlin and Family, the protagonist is the same wizard Merlin who accompanied King Arthur in their legendary adventures. In If the Old Sinbad Returned to the Islands,
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