Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Paper Sp 3

Medieval Iberian and Spanish Golden Age culture

Reading List

Alfonso X's Laws concerning Jews from the Siete partidas.

The Iberian Middle Ages and Spanish Golden Age is a fascinating and rewarding period for study. Historically the peninsula was a site of successive waves of invasion and colonization so that its cultural substrata encompass pagan, Christian, Judaic, and Islamic influences. Consequently Medieval Hispanic culture is unique and diverse. By the Golden Age period, Castilian came to dominate, the Spanish state crystallized, and the themes and ideals that were to shape later Spanish literature and thought had originated. At this point, Spain developed the largest and most important Empire in the early modern period, and was posed at the dynamic moment when it was simultaneously at the height of its power and already on the brink of decline.

This is a new second-year paper. Its aim is to provide a sample of the richness of Medieval Iberian and Spanish Golden Age culture, and insight into its art and social and political history, through texts, and topics chosen for their accessibility to second-year undergraduates. Most of the medieval literature is available in good parallel text editions or translation, as is much of the Golden Age material. Though designed as an independent course of study, it provides excellent preparation for:

• Sp 7: Spanish Literature, Thought, and History from 1492 to 1700 and
• Sp 14: Spanish Literature, Life, and History before 1492.

These are both available to Part II students in their final year. Paper Sp 2 is also an excellent foundation for the study of other Part II papers.

For this paper you will normally study three topics of your own choice from a total of five. In the examination itself three questions must be answered, each relating to a separate topic. Normally four or five lectures or classes are devoted to each topic; and you will normally spend two to three supervisions on each of those you have chosen to study.

PLEASE NOTE: from Michaelmas 2013, Tripos 14, topics for this paper will change and you should click here if you are planning on taking this paper in 2013-14. Please click here to see the specimen paper for this revised Sp3 paper.

The topics (n.b. below those relevant up to Tripos 2013) will give you the opportunity to read about:

War and the Hero

• Medieval Epic and Ballad - the life of Spain's national hero, the Cid in history and literature
• The role of the hero and male identity in medieval literature about war.

Set texts

• Colin Smith, Spanish Ballads, 2nd edn (Bristol: Classical Press, 1996)
  • or Roger Wright, Spanish Ballads [with parallel translation] (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1987).
• Poema de mio Cid, ed. Ian Michael for Castalia
  • or Poema del Cid (Poem of the Cid) in Penguin Classics, ed. Ian Michael, trans. Rita Hamilton & Janet Perry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975)
  • or trans. & ed. Peter Such & John Hodgkinson (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1987).

Race, Place, and Society

• the debt of Christian to Islamic culture, especially in technology and architecture
• the contact and conflict in medieval Spain between the three great world faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism
• the impact on Spanish society and culture of perhaps the most notorious thought-police in history - before the twentieth century at least
• the racist ideology that informed the concept and statutes of limpieza de sangre.

Set Texts

• Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, & Donald R. Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History (Cambridge: UP, 1986)
• T. F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain (Manchester: UP, 1995)
• María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin & Michael Sells, The Literature of Al-Andalus (Cambridge: UP, 2000)
• H. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997).
• A. Domínguez Ortiz, La clase social de los conversos en Castilla en la Edad Modernaa, Archivum, 23 (Granada: Univ., 1991).

Humour and the Grotesque

• popular culture in art and in Juan Ruiz's, Libro de buen amor (c. 1330)
• Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499)

Each of these deals with truancy.

Set texts

• Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, ed., G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny, Clásicos Castalia, 161 (Madrid: Castalia, 1988)
  • or Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love: ed. & trans., E. Drayson MacDonald (London: Everyman, 1999)
  • or ed. with modern Spanish, Pablo Jauralde Pou, Colección Arbolí, 16 (Madrid: Taurus, 1981)
  • [modern Spanish selections alone, Odres nuevos (Madrid: Castalia, 1966)]
• Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, ed., Dorothy S. Severin, Letras Hispánicas, 4 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1989)
  • or ed., Peter E. Russell, Clásicos Castalia (Madrid: Castalia, 2001)
  • or ed., Francisco J. Lobrera, et al., Biblioteca Clásica, 20 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2000)
  • parallel text ed., Dorothy S. Severin (Warminster: Aris & Phillips), English trans. J. M. Cohen, Penguin Classics, L142 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964).

Varieties of Love

• attitudes to sexual love from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, including:
  • sentimental romance
  • courtly lyric
  • a selection of Cervantes's novelas ejemplares.

Set texts

• Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Siervo libre de amor, in his Obras completas, ed., César Hernández Alonso (Madrid: Nacional, 1982)
  • or ed. Antonio Prieto, Clásicos Castalia, 66 (Madrid: Castalia, 1980)
• Poesía de cancionero, ed., Álvaro Alonso, Letras Hispánicas, 247 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991)
• Garcilaso de la Vega, Obra poética y textos en prosa, ed. Bienvenido Morros, with intro. by Rafael Lapesa, Biblioteca Clásica (Barcelona: Crítica, 1995): selected sonnets, Églogas, I & III
• Miguel de Cervantes, La gitanilla, La ilustre fregona, La fuerza de la sangre, and El celoso extremeño.

The Golden Age Comedy of Manners

Five comedies by five different playwrights who use the theatre to explore generational conflict, sexual politics and questions of gender, role-play and the dichotomy of illusion and reality.

Set texts

• Agustín Moreto, El lindo Don Diego
• Lope de Vega, La dama boba
• Tirso de Molina, Don Gil de las calzas verdes
• Ruiz de Alarcón, La verdad sospechosa
• Calderón, La dama duende.

General Background Reading

Before starting this module, you would be well advised to read selectively from the works listed below, and to break the back of the primary reading for at least two of the topics.

• Julio Caro Baroja, 'Honour and Shame: A Historical Account of Several Conflicts', in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. John Peristiany (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 81-137.
• Catherine Davies, ed., The Companion to Hispanic Studies (London: Arnold, 2002); chapters 2 and 3.
• Alan Deyermond, A Literary History of Spain: The Middle Ages (London: Benn, 1971).
• J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963; reprints).
• Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992; repr. Phoenix Giant, 1998).
• Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (London: Century Hutchinson, 1989; repr. Oxford: UP, 1991).
• Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469-1714, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1991).
• Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages (London: Macmillan, 1977).
• M. McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 1490-1700 (Cambridge: UP, 1989).
• J. F. Moffitt, The Arts in Spain (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999); chapters 2-5.
• A.A. Parker, The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature, 1480-1640, ed. Terry O'Reilly (Edinburgh: UP, 1985).

Cambridge bookshops (Heffers and Waterstone's) are aware of our reading lists. You may be able to purchase second-hand copies of some of the books from Heffers (tel. 01223 568568). You might also like to try online book-sellers like Amazon, alibris or abebooks.

All lists are also available online: see the Department's Home Page (spanish), under Reading Lists.

A full Reading List for this paper is now available online