Dr Roy Norton

Senior Research Fellow in Spanish

As an undergraduate I read French and Spanish at LMH, and I came to enjoy the study of European literature far more than I anticipated, in particular the literature of the period in which I now specialize, the Spanish Golden Age (broadly, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). After graduating I trained and qualified as a lawyer, and I practised in the City of London for a number of years, before conceding that the lure of academia was too strong to resist. I returned to Oxford,  completed a doctorate, and have been teaching Spanish at Pembroke ever since (and at Christ Church, New College and St Hilda’s).

Most of my FHS teaching involves Spanish literature from around 1500 to the present day, though I focus on 1500 to 1700 (esp. FHS papers VII and X). This is the period of the great Cervantes, author of the wildly influential ‘Don Quijote de la Mancha’. It is one of the most dazzling periods of world drama, with thousands of plays penned for the insatiable audiences of Spain’s public playhouses by the likes of Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca. And the period produced a weighty and varied output of poetry, from the fiendishly difficult (but very satisfying) Baroque excesses of Góngora to the hauntingly mysterious verse of St John of the Cross. I enjoy hearing my students’ insights on this literature and always feel pleased when it strikes a chord with their own life experiences. In some ways little has changed in five hundred years.

My research has three principal focuses: Golden-Age theatre, the Spanish Mystics, and – a developing interest – the reception of Golden-Age literature in other European countries in the early modern period and in Spanish literature in the modern period. With Jonathan Thacker (Oxford’s King Alfonso XIII Chair of Spanish Studies) I have recently co-edited the ‘Companion to Calderón de la Barca’. My current project involves a study of the reception in early modern England of the figure and the writings of St Teresa of Ávila. Her major works were translated into English three times in the seventeenth century, in three very different contexts, and with three interestingly diverse approaches.

Dr Roy Norton

Senior Research Fellow in Spanish

As an undergraduate I read French and Spanish at LMH, and I came to enjoy the study of European literature far more than I anticipated, in particular the literature of the period in which I now specialize, the Spanish Golden Age (broadly, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). After graduating I trained and qualified as a lawyer, and I practised in the City of London for a number of years, before conceding that the lure of academia was too strong to resist. I returned to Oxford,  completed a doctorate, and have been teaching Spanish at Pembroke ever since (and at Christ Church, New College and St Hilda’s).

Most of my FHS teaching involves Spanish literature from around 1500 to the present day, though I focus on 1500 to 1700 (esp. FHS papers VII and X). This is the period of the great Cervantes, author of the wildly influential ‘Don Quijote de la Mancha’. It is one of the most dazzling periods of world drama, with thousands of plays penned for the insatiable audiences of Spain’s public playhouses by the likes of Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca. And the period produced a weighty and varied output of poetry, from the fiendishly difficult (but very satisfying) Baroque excesses of Góngora to the hauntingly mysterious verse of St John of the Cross. I enjoy hearing my students’ insights on this literature and always feel pleased when it strikes a chord with their own life experiences. In some ways little has changed in five hundred years.

My research has three principal focuses: Golden-Age theatre, the Spanish Mystics, and – a developing interest – the reception of Golden-Age literature in other European countries in the early modern period and in Spanish literature in the modern period. With Jonathan Thacker (Oxford’s King Alfonso XIII Chair of Spanish Studies) I have recently co-edited the ‘Companion to Calderón de la Barca’. My current project involves a study of the reception in early modern England of the figure and the writings of St Teresa of Ávila. Her major works were translated into English three times in the seventeenth century, in three very different contexts, and with three interestingly diverse approaches.