Fictional Knights, Literary Translators, and Araucanian Heroes; or the Emergence of the Spanish Historical Epic

Annual Will & Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture

Professor Efraín Kristal (Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA) traces the emergence of Early Modern Spanish epic poetry to allegorical poetry from Burgundy, to Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and to translations of these works from French and Italian into Spanish.  He gives pride of place to Jeronimo de Urrea’s La Carolea, an epic poem about military campaigns in the time of Charles V; and to Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s La Araucana: the highpoint of the genre, featuring the prowess of indigenous heroes and the failure of Spanish conquistadors in South America.

Advance registration required! Please write to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu or call 310-825-1880 to register.

The Samuel Pepys Lecture Series is made possible by an endowment left to the UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies by former CMRS Director William Matthews and his wife Lois.