Modernism was one of the most transcendental literary movements in the Spanish language. It was a daring literary adventure that renewed poetry, narrative prose, and even journalism. It was headed by Rubén Darío, and formed a great school of followers both in Spain and in Latin America, from Juan Ramón Jiménez to Jorge Luis Borges. It will be explained considering its influences from symbolism and French Parnassianism, to the introduction of very adventurous forms of literary expression that broke the old nineteenth-century molds, a revolution that conquered a brilliant myriad of writers. A movement that had also a great political influence.

Although in open societies we tend not to view the writing and reading of fiction as an activity potentially fraught with danger, other ages and places have. In fact, since the time of Plato, literature has often been considered to be one of the most potentially dangerous media of communication. At the same time, examples and parables have, over the centuries, offered models of behavior that are overtly instructive, projecting the values of the official culture in which they were produced. This course explores these key aspects of Premodern literature.

España s.a. (Sociedad Anónima and/or Sin Autor) reflects the problematic condition of a "nación que no acaba de existir" (Alba Rico) as a study case from the colonial crisis at the beginning of modernity to today's global neoliberalism. We explore the current research perspectives of the Spanish nation-state that the federalist movements will call "prison of peoples", others will split into "dos Españas" and that today takes fractal form: the emptied one, the one of the pools, the one in which nothing ever happens, etc. We analyze some of the most relevant recent studies around Spanish modernity (19th century to the present).