Fellows & Staff

Dr Jonathan Thacker

BA London, PhD Cantab Lecturer in Spanish, Fellow in Spanish, Merton College and Lecturer, New College jonathan.thacker@merton.ox.ac.uk

Academic Background

I studied French and Spanish at King's College, London as an undergraduate, and Spanish Golden-Age drama for my PhD at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I have taught at Birkbeck College, London (1994-97) and University College London (1997-2001).

Undergraduate Teaching

Spanish Golden-Age prose, poetry and drama; language, especially translation.

Postgraduate Teaching

On the MSt in European Literature (Spanish) I convene the following Special Subjects: Drama in an Ideological Age; Public Role and Private Self in Golden-Age Drama; Developments in Prose Narrative in the Spanish Renaissance.

I also supervise graduates working on various aspects of early-modern theatre and culture including: sixteenth-century theatre, Golden-Age drama, Golden-Age painting, modern performance and translation of Spanish classical drama, the ideology of reception of Golden-Age drama.

Research Interests

My main research interests are in the Spanish Golden Age (the period from about 1550 to about 1680). I have written on Miguel de Cervantes and co-translated some of his Exemplary Novels. I have written a general guide to Spanish theatre of the Golden Age, as well as several articles on various aspects of Golden-Age drama, specifically the metatheatrical elements, the performance, and the ideological content of works by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Guillén de Castro.

I am currently engaged in an investigation into the treatment of madness in the plays of Lope de Vega and am writing a Companion to Golden-Age drama. I also frequently review and advise on modern productions of Golden-Age drama including the RSC's 2004 Golden-Age season.

I co-run an AHRC project called Out of the Wings on Spanish and Spanish-American Theatre in Performance and Translation.

Selected Publications

Books

Role-play and the World as Stage in the comedia (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002).

Companion to Golden-Age Drama (London: Tamesis, 2007).

A Companion to Lope de Vega (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008), co-edited with Alexander Samson.

Articles

'Rethinking Golden-Age Drama: The Comedia and its Contexts', Paragraph, 22 (1999), 14-34.

'"Que yo le haré de suerte que os espante,/ si el fingimiento a la verdad excede": Creative Use of Art in Lope de Vega's Los locos de Valencia (and Velázquez's Fábula de Aracne)', Modern Language Review, 95 (2000), 1007-18.

'La locura en las obras dramáticas tempranas de Lope de Vega', in Memoria de la palabra: Actas del VI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro, 2 vols, eds. María Luisa Lobato y Francisco Domínguez Matito, (Frankfurt and Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2004), II, 1717-30.

'"Puedo yo con sola la vista oír leyendo": Reading, Seeing and Hearing the Comedia', Comedia Performance, 1 (2004), 143-73.

'Lope de Vega, El cuerdo loco, and "la más discreta figura de la comedia"', Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 81 (2004), 463-78.

'La figura de la Comedia en El rufián dichoso de Cervantes', in La comedia de santos, ed. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez y Almudena García González (Almagro: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2008), 121- 134.

'Tirso's Tamar Untamed: A Lesson of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Production', in The Comedia in English: Translation and Performance, eds Susan Paun de García and Donald R. Larson (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008), 164-76.

'"Véote, y no te conozco": the unrecognizable form of Cervantes's El rufián dichoso', Hispanic Research Journal, 10 (2009), 206-26.

Translations

Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplary Novels, III (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1992) (introductions and translations with Michael Thacker).

Tirso de Molina, Damned for Despair (Bath: Absolute Press, 1992) (co-translator with Laurence Boswell).

See also the Faculty of Modern Languages website.