Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Paper Sp 7

Spanish Literature, Thought, and History, from 1492 to 1700

Reading List

This paper covers the period known as Spain's Golden Age, running from the conquest of Granada in 1492 down to the end of the Hapsburg dynasty. It was a period of dramatic contrasts: e.g. of Spanish hegemony in Europe followed by military, political and economic decline. In literature and the arts - first the Renaissance, then the Counter-Reformation, after that the Baroque - it was a time of astonishing achievement, with an exceptional range of drama, prose, poetry and painting: Garcilaso de la Vega, the picaresque novel, Santa Teresa of Ávila, Cervantes, Góngora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, María de Zayas, Calderón, Tirso de Molina, Gracián, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Murillo, Velázquez and Valdés Leal to name only the most famous.

The paper is topic based, and the topics, five in all, thematic rather than genre- or author-orientated, are (from 2012-2013): Word and Image; Wit and Illusion: The Baroque Vision; Don Quijote and the World of Fiction; Discovering the Other; and The World as Stage: Theatre and Society. Candidates will be required to answer on three of these topics in the examination. Since some authors and texts will feature in more than one topic, students could cope adequately with the paper if they had covered most books in Section III of the Golden-Age Reading list. More specific reading guidance for each topic will be given in the classes. Please see at the end of this page a link to specimen paper from TRIPOS 2013.

Introductory reading

• J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (London: Penguin, 2002).
• H. Kamen, Spain 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict (London-New York: Longman, 1991).
• R.O. Jones, A Literary History of Spain: The Golden Age: Prose and Poetry (London: E. Benn, 1971).
• Edward M. Wilson and Duncan Moir, The Golden Age: Drama (London: E. Benn, 1971).
• M.C. McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 1490-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989)

A full Reading List for this paper is available online

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.

From the academic year 2012-2013, the format of this paper is changing from previous years' style. There is a copy of the specimen paper for Tripos 2013 in the MML Library and you can also see it online on this PDF file, please click here. PLEASE bear in mind the new format when you refer to past papers for revisions, etc.