Anglo-Spanish Exchanges

26 March 2014
UCL's Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies and the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges invite you to a seminar with Martine Gagnon (UCL) and Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón (Cantabria).

Martine Gagnon (UCL), A Spanish Friar in the English Court: James Mabbe's English Translation of Tratado de republica y policia christiana by Fray Juan de Santa Maria.

James Mabbe is well known for his  translations of Spanish prose literature, namely that of Miguel de Cervantes, Fernando de Rojas, and Mateo Aleman. He has been credited as the first serious English Hispanist and critic of Spanish works. However, most existing scholarship has focused on his achievements solely with regard to the literary texts and has ignored his other work on two Spanish political and religious treatises. In this paper, I hope to introduce briefly what influence his 1632 translation of Fray Juan de Santa Maria's political text had in Caroline England, under Charles I's personal rule.

Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón (Universidad de Cantabria), Medieval or Modern Queen? Catherine of Aragon's role in the Anglo-Spanish alliance and her contribution to the introduction of New Learning in England.

This paper addresses Queen Catherine's role as a patron of the arts and culture in Tudor England contributing to the work of her predecessors in England Eleanor, Constance and Isabella of Castile and in Castile of Eleanor of Plantagenet and Catherine of Lancaster. This will help shape a vision of the construction of memory associated to queenship and the role these women played in the transmission of culture and artistic ideas. It will also contribute to overcome the traditional idea that male monarchs were the centre of court life and the main responsible agents of the introduction of new ideas and cultural or artistic artefacts. In fact, the great mobility of these women with their entourages proves to be one of the key elements for change in court life not only in the Middle Ages but throughout the Modern period