Reading Analysis is Part B of the multiple-choice section and the largest share of your score. This chapter holds the 38 required works, grouped by the CED's eight units, and the terms for narrators, plot, tone, meaning and drama that Part B's questions use. Every free-response question also starts from a required work, so these cards count twice.
- Conde Lucanor, Exemplo XXXV
- Don Juan Manuel (Spain), 1335, Edad Media; didactic prose. Patronio advises Count Lucanor with the tale of a poor young Moor who tames his fierce, rich bride.
- Example: Left alone with his bride after the wedding, the groom orders his dog, cat and horse to bring water and kills each one.
- Lazarillo de Tormes
- Anonymous (Spain), 1554, Renacimiento; often called the first novela picaresca. In a first-person letter to Vuestra Merced, Lázaro tells how he rose from servant of many masters to town crier.
- Example: In Tratado 1 the blind man slams Lázaro's head against a stone bull in Salamanca: his first lesson in cunning.
- Soneto CLXVI (“Mientras por competir con tu cabello”)
- Luis de Góngora (Spain), 1582, Barroco (culteranismo): a carpe diem sonnet; the lady's hair, forehead, lip and neck outshine gold, lily, carnation and crystal, but all will end in nothing.
- Example: The final line is a gradación that shrinks everything to zero: «en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada».
- “En una tempestad”
- José María Heredia (Cuba), 1822, Romanticismo: a poem that speaks to an approaching hurricane, finding in nature's terrifying power a sign of God's greatness.
- Example: It opens with an apóstrofe to the storm, «Huracán, huracán, venir te siento»; later the frightened birds tremble and hide.
- San Manuel Bueno, mártir
- Miguel de Unamuno (Spain), 1931, Generación del 98: a short novel in which Ángela recalls Don Manuel, a village priest who hides his lack of faith in eternal life.
- Example: Reciting the Creed with the village, Don Manuel falls silent at the line about the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting.
- La casa de Bernarda Alba
- Federico García Lorca (Spain), 1936, Generación del 27: a tragedy in three acts where a tyrannical widow locks her five daughters into mourning, and repression ends in the youngest's suicide.
- Example: Bernarda's cane stands for her power; Adela, the youngest, who secretly meets her sister's fiancé, breaks it in rebellion.
- “Borges y yo”
- Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), El hacedor (1960), Boom era (a forerunner): a short prose text in which the private “yo” describes “Borges”, the famous writer who takes over his life.
- Example: The final sentence says he doesn't know which of the two is writing the page: desdoblamiento and paradoja in one line.
- “Mi caballo mago”
- Sabine Ulibarrí (New Mexico, U.S.), Tierra Amarilla (1964), literatura hispana de Estados Unidos: an adult narrator recalls how, at fifteen, he captured a legendary wild white horse.
- Example: The morning after the capture, tracks lead through the barbed-wire fence, whose barbs hold white hairs and blood; the boy weeps with joy.
- narrador omnisciente
- A third-person narrator who knows everything, including every character's thoughts and feelings. It lets readers see inside several minds and judge events from above.
- Example: «Ana sonreía, pero por dentro temía que su hermano nunca volviera.» (The narrator reveals a fear Ana hides.)
- trama
- The chain of events in a story, linked by cause and effect and arranged in the order the author chooses. Questions on trama ask what happens and why.
- Example: «Perdió el autobús, por eso llegó tarde, por eso no conoció a su futura esposa.» (Each event causes the next.)
- ambigüedad
- A word, image or ending that allows more than one valid reading. It invites interpretation; the best answer admits what the text leaves open.
- Example: «Cuando abrió la puerta, ya no había nadie, o quizá nunca hubo nadie.» (Was the visitor real? The text won't say.)
- acotación
- A stage direction in a play's script, often in parentheses or italics, describing setting, movement or tone. It is the playwright's own voice and can carry symbols.
- Example: Lorca's first acotación describes a very white room in Bernarda's house, a whiteness that hints at the purity she demands.
