The first meeting of the Reading Group on Iberian History (Medieval & Early Modern) will take place on Wednesday of week 3 (5 February), at 2 PM in the Kloppenburg Room, Cohen Quad (Exeter College). This term the meetings will have a different format from previous sessions, and will consist of a series of discussions on one of the most famous works of Golden Age drama: Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna.
The aim of the series is to discuss what we can do with literary sources as historians. We were inspired to do this in part by a remark made by Sir John Elliott about the importance of the Golden Age Theatre for Spanish history at the launch of the Routledge volume The Iberian World 1450-1820 that was hosted at Exeter College in the past November.
Preliminary knowldege of the play is strongly recommended. The text can be accessed in one of the following versions:
Spanish edition: Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, ed. R. Froldi (Espasa-Calpe) [available here]
English edition: Lope de Vega, Fuenteovejuna, trans. G.J. Racz (Yale, 2010) [available on SOLO] OR Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, trans. L. Boswell (Bloomsbury, 2016) [available on SOLO]
Bilingual edition: Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, ed. and trans. V. Dixon (Aris and Phillips, 1989)
Preliminary knowledge of the author and the scholarship on the paly is not required. However, those interested in some introductory reading can refer to the following bibliography:
For an introduction to Lope de Vega, see the chapter 'Lope de Vega' in J. Thacker, A Companion to Golden Age Theatre (2007), pp. 23-55 [available on SOLO]. For a more extensive overview, see A Companion to Lope de Vega, edited by A. Samson and J. Thacker (2008), esp. the chapter by A. Samson and J. Thacker, 'Three Canonical Plays', pp. 119-130. Specifically on Fuente Ovejuna, see V. Dixon's introduction to his edition of Fuente Ovejuna (1989) and P.E. Larson, 'Fuente Ovejuna: History, Historiography, and Literary History', Bulletin of the Comediantes 53:2 (2001): 267-290 [available on SOLO]
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The first session will be focused on this very question: what kind of questions can we as historians/art historians/etc. ask of a source like Fuenteovejuna? Does the play function as a kind of historical archive? Does the play tell us anything about the patterns and assumptions of fifteenth-century politics or culture, or is it solely a window into the world of the Siglo de Oro?
Reading:
F. de Rades y Andrada, 'Chronica de Calatrava', in Chronica de las tres ordenes de caballería de Santiago, Calatrava y Alcantara (1572), ff. 79v-80r.
A.H. Pasco, 'Literature as historical archive', New Literary History 35:3 (2004): 373-394.
A.R. Lauer, 'The recovery of the repressed: A neo-historical reading of Fuenteovejuna', in New Historicism and the Comedia: Poetics, Politics, Praxis, edited by J.A. Madrigal (1997), pp. 15-28.
