Dr Oliver Noble Wood
Tutorial Fellow in Spanish
University Lecturer in Golden Age Spanish Literature
I took up the role of Tutorial Fellow in Spanish at Hertford in 2010, following four years as a postdoctoral researcher and then lecturer at the University of Nottingham. Before that, I studied at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at St Anne’s College, Oxford.
Undergraduate teaching
I teach three of the four papers on the first-year Spanish course, focusing on translation from Spanish into English and a broad introduction to Hispanic literature from the medieval period to the twentieth century. At second-year level and beyond, I specialise in options relating to early modern Spanish literature and culture. These include a survey course of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, a paper focusing on groundbreaking early modern authors from Garcilaso to Sor Juana, and a special subject option on links between literature and the visual arts in Golden Age Spain.
Graduate teaching
I am keen to hear from prospective postgraduate students in the broad area of early modern Spanish literature and culture. I teach various options at MSt and MPhil level, including one on Cervantes and one on dialogue between literature and the visual arts. I have supervised research projects on subjects ranging from the poetry of Góngora to the reception of Cervantes in later European contexts.
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Research interests
My research interests focus on various aspects of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature and culture, from the poetry of Garcilaso to the painting of Velázquez. I have published on many of the canonical authors of the period, including Cervantes, Góngora, Quevedo, and Calderón. My current projects include work on the poetry of Quevedo, early English translations of Góngora’s sonnets, and the poetry, prose, and drama of the lesser-known writer Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo.
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Publications
Articles and chapters
- ‘“Yo con la gata me caso”: Algunas notas sobre El galán tramposo y pobre de Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo’, Edad de Oro (forthcoming)
- ‘Calderón and Visual Art’, in A Companion to Calderón de la Barca, ed. Roy Norton and Jonathan Thacker (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2021), pp. 223–49
- ‘¿Alquimistas mentecatos?: Traducciones inglesas de La garduña de Sevilla, 1665–1792’, Criticón, 136 (2019; Castillo Solórzano, novelador II), 135–56
- ‘“¿Qué lector será el que no se ría?”: Incongruity and Ironic Allusion in Don Quixote II. 60’, in The Art of Cervantes in ‘Don Quixote’: Critical Essays, ed. Stephen Boyd, Trudi Darby, and Terence O’Reilly, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 27 (Oxford: Legenda, 2019), pp. 35–64
- ‘A Silly Little Thing Called Love: Foolishness, Farce, and Fancy in Manuel Iborra’s La dama boba (2006)’, in Connecting Past and Present: Exploring the Influence of the Spanish Golden Age in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. Aaron Kahn (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 187–209
- ‘“¿Desgracias anulares?”: Narrative Loops in Quevedo’s El Buscón’, in Artifice and Invention in the Spanish Golden Age, ed. by Stephen Boyd and Terence O’Reilly, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 3 (Oxford: Legenda, 2014), pp. 21–31
- ‘“Ensíllenme el asno rucio” (1585): Parody and Burlesque in a Contrafactum’, in A Poet for All Seasons (above), pp. 1–23
- “Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas: Bibliotecas y bibliofilia en la literatura del Siglo de Oro”, in Poder y saber (above), pp. 277–96
- “Metaphors of Anarchism: The Rhetoric of an Andalusian Post-Conflict Testimony”, in The Genre of Post-Conflict Testimonies, ed. by Cristina Demaria and Macdonald Daly (Nottingham: CCCP, 2010), pp. 82–107
- “Salvador Jacinto Polo de Medina: ‘A Vulcano, Venus y Marte’”, in The Spanish Ballad in the Golden Age, ed. by Nigel Griffin & others, Serie A Monografías, 264 (London: Támesis: 2008), pp. 175–221
- “Re-examining Some of the Literary Sources for Velázquez’s La fragua de Vulcano”, in Latin and Vernacular in Renaissance Spain: Ovid from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, ed. by Barry Taylor and Alejandro Coroleu (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 147–61
- “Mars Recontextualised in the Golden Age of Spain: Psychological and Aesthetic Readings of Velázquez’s Marte”, in Rewriting Classical Mythology in the Hispanic Baroque, ed. by Isabel Torres, Serie A Monografías, 233 (London: Támesis, 2007), pp. 139–55
Books
- (ed. with J. Andrews & J. Roe) On Art and Painting: Vicente Carducho and Baroque Spain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016)
- A Tale Blazed Through Heaven: Imitation and Invention in the Golden Age of Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
- (ed. with N. Griffin) ‘A Poet for All Seasons: Eight Commentaries on Góngora’, Spanish Series, 156 (New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2013)
- (ed. with J. Roe & J. Lawrance) Poder y saber: Bibliotecas y bibliofilia en la época del conde-duque de Olivares (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2011)