Literature in Spanish Trivia Quiz

Answer: Don Quixote

This novel by Miguel de Cervantes satirizes the age of chivalry and its heroic principles. The novel implodes fairy tales both in social and private life. Additionally, it includes inset stories, journey and dystopian fiction. Most importantly, the figures of the suffering, idealistic Don Quixote and his faithful earthy ally, Sancho Panza, have earned the respect, laughter and tears of generations of readers.

Answer: La madre naturaleza

Emilia Pardo Bazán is a writer who has not gained the attention she deserves. The nineteenth century novel 'La Madre Naturaleza' is both an extended praise of nature in a world which may be changing to disrespect nature and also a powerful Naturalist critique of the values of late nineteenth century Spain.

Answer: Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades

This anonymous sixteenth century novella belongs to a genre called the 'picaresque.' It recounts from the vantage point of a sometimes lower class narrator a series of events occurring in many places. It also ironically depicts people from highly diverse social classes. Often, these forms of fiction introduce the stories of people hidden or outlawed from "respectable" society. Parts of this particular novel were banned at one time because of scenes and comments which were considered anti-clerical.

Answer: Fortunata y Jacinta

The novel is actually the story of the two women named in the title: Fortunata and Jacinta. Fortunata comes from a lower class; Jacinta is Juanito's cousin. Juanito is the son of a rich family. Juanito's life overlaps with each of the two women named in the title. The novel is an astoundingly rich depiction of later 19th century Madrid and the changes which profoundly affect its citizens.

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) has been often compared with Dickens for his comprehensive social view, his careful social criticism and his heart-wrenching characterizations. Galdos wrote some 31 novels, including "Doña Perfecta," "Misericordia" and his extensive series, "Episodios Nacionales." He is particularly famous for abandoning Romanticism and presenting the world of "common people" in realistic terms.

Answer: Nada

One telling section from the novel's English translation by Edith Grossman explains the novel's title:

"'And it came to me in waves,' says Andrea when she realises...that she has walked into a nightmare: 'First, innocent memories, dreams, struggles, my own vacillating present, and then, sharp joys, sorrows, despair, a significant contraction of life, a negation into nothing.'"

The mystery throughout the book is whether Andrea will be able to cope with the sordid meaninglessness of her time at her grandmother's house? The novel powerfully presents her struggles to do so.

Answer: La Celestina

Calisto, a nobleman, sees and falls in love with Melibea after Celestina (whom he hired) arranged a meeting between them. He has a highly unromantic death, falling from a ladder leaving Melibea's house. Melibea, a beautiful girl, is talked into meeting Calisto. Her death is a suicide. The novel poignantly emphasizes the class difference between then.

Celestina is a famous literary type in medieval literature. Her job is literally to find ways to get people to meet (for a fee, of course). She is a mixture of the bawdy, the comic and the pathetic.

Answer: Soldados de Salamina

Javier Cercas was born in Extremadura in 1962. His 2001 novel seems to refer to the classical Greeks, but actually the novel takes place in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Cercas the novelist becomes a character in this novel which many call "factoid fiction," that is, a blend of fiction and non-fiction.

This novel was a huge best seller in Spain and became a film in 2003.

Answer: El cuarto de atrás

Carmen Martín Gaite was born in Salamanca in 1925. She was a most respected writer whose work ranged from the censorship of mid-century and Franquist Spain to powerful meta-fictional explorations of conversations, mothers and daughters, and of the writing process.

As the author of more than eleven novels, poetry, drama, translations of "Madame Bovary" and "To the Lighthouse," and numerous non-fictional studies of social customs, writing fiction, the eighteenth-century, New York City, and women as writers and readers, her work certainly deserves attention and careful reading.

Answer: Niebla

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) is a pivotal, awe-inspiring figure who died in the midst of the Franquist uprising in Spain. He wrote in all literary genres, wanting to find ways to erase differences between them.
Ever a radical, he invented his new term for novels, "Nivolas,' to name a form not as factual or cut and dried as objective realist fiction.

He is famous for this belief, "My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live."

Answer: La lucha por la vida

Pío Baroja is a major early twentieth century writer who wrote various trilogies. Also a physician, his "El árbol de la ciencia" ("The Tree of Science") grapples with the issue of belief and knowing. His main character becomes more negative the more he comes to know. This is an echo of the pessimism which would develop in the wake of World War I.

Ernest Hemingway is said to have respected Baroja's writing enormously.