The Spanish Prelims (Preliminary Examinations), for which you study in your first year at Oxford consists of two language papers and two literature papers, as outlined below:

Paper I
a) translation of a passage of modern English into Spanish (called a ‘prose)
b) a set of grammatical sentences in English for translation, designed to test your knowledge
of grammar
Tuition for this paper is organised centrally and you will be taught mainly by native speakers
in classes with students from other Colleges.

Paper II
a) two translations into English of similar length but different registers.
This paper is taught by me weekly to the students of my two Colleges (Lincoln and Jesus)
together. As well as learning translation skills, we continue to work on Spanish grammar and
vocabulary in these classes.

Paper III
This paper involves the study of four works of prose fiction written by authors from several
Spanish-speaking countries. You will have centrally-organized lectures on these texts as well
as tutorials taught by me. This Paper III material will be examined by a three-hour written
paper in which candidates must answer three essay questions on three separate texts.

The texts to be studied are:

• Miguel de Cervantes, ‘Rinconete y Cortadillo’ from Vol. 1 of Novelas ejemplares (ed. H. Sieber, Madrid: Cátedra).
• Ana María Matute, Primera memoria (Destino), or, alternatively, the novel can be
  found in the trilogy Los mercaderes (Destino).
• Nellie Campobello, Cartucho (ed. Josebe Martínez, Cátedra).
• Alejo Carpentier, El reino de este mundo (Austral).

Paper IV
This paper consists of two plays, two poetic anthologies and one collection of poems,
selected to introduce you to literature from the medieval period to modern times. It is taught,
like paper III, in tutorials in College, and through lectures. This Paper IV material will
normally be examined by a three-hour written paper in which you must answer three
commentary questions, taking one from each of the three periods (medieval, Golden Age, and
modern), with a choice of passages in each case (passages will be ‘paired’).

The texts to be studied are:

• El romancero viejo, ed. M. Díaz Roig (Madrid: Cátedra). Poems 1,3, 5,6,7, 8, 9,14, 18, 38, 40, 44, 50, 52, 54, 66, 68, 72, 76, 86, 94, 97 and 97a, 99, 110, 111, 117, 121, 125, 127, 128.
• Golden Age sonnets, please see the separate PDF for the thirty sonnets that are prescribed.
• Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El médico du su honra (ed. D. W. Cruickshank, Madrid:
  Castalia).
• Federico García Lorca, Doña Rosita la soltera (ed. Mario Hernández Sánchez, Madrid:
  Alianza).
• César Vallejo, Los heraldos negros (ed. René de Costa, Madrid: Cátedra).

 

For language work, the following are essential: A good bilingual dictionary, preferably the Oxford Spanish Dictionary (4th ed., 2008), and Butt and Benjamin, A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. It is important that you read at least the texts for Paper IV before coming to Oxford to keep up with the workload, as we will make a start on this paper in the first term.

Do not hesitate to contact me, if you have any queries. You can reach me preferably by email (daniela.omlor@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) or by phone (01865 279777).

Dr Daniela Omlor, Fellow in Spanish

Prefer to work from a paper copy? Download a printable version here.

Paper XI: Introduction to Hispanic Film Studies
This paper will introduce you to four twentieth- and twenty-first century film directors. In your
essay writing you will be able to engage with their ideas and with their particular way of
realising them. The prescribed films are:

• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, 1976)
• Dolor y gloria (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2019)
• Memorias del subdesarrollo (dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1967)
• Camila (dir. María Luisa Bemberg, 1984)

This paper aims to offer students basic skills in film analysis. It is taught in two parts:
1. a methodological one, consisting of four lectures devoted to four international films, presents
the basic concepts of film analysis, such as montage, story, self-reference, and spectatorship.
The international films taught in this part are used simply as illustrations for the lectures and
are not treated as set texts for examination purposes. A representative selection might include
the following films: Potemkin (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925); The 39 Steps (dir. Alfred Hitchcock,
1935); Blow-Up (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967); and Beau Travail (dir. Claire Denis, 1999);

2. a language-specific part devoted to the study of representative films from the Hispanic
cinematic tradition. This second part of the course is focused on the study of four films from
Spain and Latin America, as prescribed above. This part is taught in seminars, instead of
lectures. Hailing as they do from different cultural and historical contexts, the films studied will
offer students a good introduction to the diversity of cinematic industries across the Hispanic
world. It will also allow students to scrutinize specific political and cultural contexts in the
Spanish-speaking world ranging from revolutionary Cuba in the 1960s to Spain’s cultural
transformation during the 1970s up to the twenty-first century. We will explore the varied
narrative and formal techniques employed by each of these directors, the historical and
political themes with which they engage, as well as the local and international reception of
these films. Students will be encouraged to develop skills in scene analysis through
discussions in the seminars. They will be expected to explore other literary and cinematic
material to further contextualize each of the films under scrutiny.

This Paper will be certified.

Paper XII: Introduction to Spanish Medieval Studies
This paper aims to introduce students to the study of Spanish medieval texts. It is taught in a
combination of lectures and seminars (eight in total), focusing on cultural context, close
reading and language support.

The set texts are: (i) Traditional Lyric: extracts consisting of selections from Frenk’s
anthologies of early Iberian lyric; (ii) Sendebar (Libro de los engaños) (1253), a Spanish
translation of short exemplary tales which originate in India and reached the Arab world via
Persia; (iii) Jorge Manrique, Coplas por la muerte de su padre (between 1476 and 1479), a
much celebrated poetic examination of death, fame, and the meaning of life via imagery of
warfare and insight into the warrior caste; and (iv) Diego de San Pedro, Cárcel de amor (1492),
a sentimental romance which reflects the idea of love prevalent in fifteenth-century literature
and culture as well as the elaborated and highly classicist style much in vogue in late medieval
courtly literature in Spain; an important precursor to Celestina which was one of the first
European best sellers, thanks to its Italian, English and French translations.

Details of anthologized extracts and recommended editions

• Lírica española de tipo popular, ed. Margit Frenk (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001)
• Parte I: all of the ‘Primeros testimonios’ (Jarchas, cantigas d’amigo y otras canciones
  anteriores a 1450) and Parte II: from ‘Cantares de amor’ numbers: 68, 73, 74, 79, 81, 82,
  86, 89, 91, 99, 101, 102–107, 110, 114, 118, 119, 122, 127, 159, 182, 196, 199–202, 267,
  320, 334.
• Sendebar, ed. María Jesús Lacarra (Madrid: Cátedra, 2011).
• Jorge Manrique, ‘Coplas a la muerte de su padre’, in Poesía, ed. María Morrás, (Madrid:
  Castalia, 2003).
• Diego de San Pedro, Cárcel de amor, ed. Keith Whinnom (Madrid: Castalia, 1982).

The exam consists of a three-hour paper in which each student has to write a commentary
(on a passage from Sendebar, Coplas, or Cárcel de Amor) and answer three questions on three
of the four set texts (the ones not selected for the commentary question).

Paper XIII: Introduction to Short Fiction in Spanish
This paper introduces students to a range of short fiction from Spain and Spanish America,
covering the period from the Golden Age to the present and including works by a number of
the most important practitioners of the genre. Introductory lectures will encourage students
both to consider works in their specific literary-historical context and also to think more
broadly about the aesthetics of short fiction across the ages. Seminars will focus on the
analysis of particular texts and are intended to help students develop their close reading skills
and sensitivity to matters of form, structure, narrative technique and style in the specific
context of the short story. The course will be examined via a three-hour paper consisting of
both commentaries and essays, a number of which will be theoretical and/or comparative in
nature. Candidates will be required to answer three questions, including at least one
commentary and one essay.

Details of anthologized extracts and recommended editions

• Miguel de Cervantes, ‘Novela del celoso extremeño’, in Novelas ejemplares, vol. II, ed.
  Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, 3 vols (Madrid: Castalia, 1987)
• María de Zayas y Sotomayor, ‘El prevenido engañado’, in Novelas amorosas y
  ejemplares, ed. Julián Olivares (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000)
• Benito Pérez Galdós, ‘La novela en el tranvía’, in Cuentos fantásticos, ed. Alan E. Smith
  (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004)
• Julio Cortázar, ‘Continuidad de los parques’, ‘Las babas del diablo’, ‘La isla a mediodía’,
  in Final del juego (Madrid: Santillana, 2009) and Siete cuentos, ed. Peter Beardsell
  (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999)
• Juan Rulfo, ‘Nos han dado la tierra’, ‘Es que somos muy pobres’, ‘El hombre’, in El Llano
  en llamas, ed. Françoise Perus (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016)