Sara Medina Calzada

Universidad de Valladolid | UVA · Department of English Philology

This article examines the public image of King Ferdinand VII of Spain in Britain during his reign (1814–1833) by exploring his portrayal in British newspapers, caricatures, non-fiction books and literary texts, including the works published in English by Spanish liberals exiled in Britain. On the whole, the king’s efforts to restore absolutism, the...

This book chapter explores Edward's views on Spain and the Spanish Revolution of 1820 as reflected in his An Historical Review of the Spanish Revolution (1822). An ardent disciple of Benthamism and liberalism, Blaquiere travelled to Spain in 1820 after Riego's military coup and the restoration of the 1812 Constitution to obtain first-hand informati...

This book explores the connections that José Joaquín de Mora (1783–1864) established with Britain, where he was exiled from 1823 to 1826 and was to return as diplomat in the following decades. His admiration for the British materialised in a series of cultural transfers aimed at the promotion and diffusion of British culture in Spain and Spanish Am...

This paper explores the representations of Spain, and particularly Spanish women, in five British literary annuals of the late Romantic period (1823-1830): Forget Me Not, The Literary Souvenir, Friendship’s Offering, The Keepsake and The Amulet. Literary annuals were illustrated anthologies of poems, short stories and travelogues which started to b...

This paper analyses Joseph Blanco White’s English translations of tales XI and XLIV of Don Juan Manuel’s El conde Lucanor (c. 1331-1335), which were published in the New Monthly Magazine in 1824. In these fairly free translations, Blanco rewrites and recontextualises the tales by updating and adapting them to the knowledge and expectations of the t...

British volunteers fought on both sides of the First Carlist War (1833–1840), the dynastic struggle between the liberal factions that championed Isabella II and the reactionary forces that supported Don Carlos’s claim to the Spanish throne. Despite British intervention, the conflict did not arouse as much interest in Britain as the Peninsular War (...

This article examines Emilio Castelar’s Vida de Lord Byron (1873), the first Spanish biography of Byron. Borrowing most information from Moore’s and, especially, Lescure’s biographies of the poet, Castelar provides an apologetic and over-romantic portrait of Byron, in which he tries to reconstruct his private life and inner self, depicting him as a...

El presente trabajo analiza el nivel de alfabetización informacional de un grupo de estudiantes de la asignatura “Inglés Profesional y Académico” del Grado en Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad de Valladolid. Se trata de un estudio de caso en el que mediante un cuestionario de elaboración propia se recopiló información acerca de las prácticas y pe...

This paper examines the translations of Byron’s works into Spanish published between 1818 and 1844. The analysis of these translations reveals two trends: first, there were a good number of Spanish prose translations based on French prose versions of Byron’s poems; second, the few translations in verse trying to adapt Byron’s poetic language to the...

This paper analyses the drama Ferdinand the Seventh; or, A Dramatic Sketch of the Recent Revolution in Spain. Published in London in 1823, this play explores the reactions to the coup led by Rafael de Riego in the court of Ferdinand VII. The author clearly supports the liberal cause and portrays the King as a weak and changeable individual, who fir...

This paper examines Don Juan; or the Battle of Tolosa, an anonymous poem published in London in 1816. This metrical tale set in medieval Iberia at the time of the so-called reconquista recreates the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), in which the Muslim forces were defeated by a Christian coalition near Sierra Morena. The poet clearly sides with...

this paper examines Francisco Morera’s Juana Eyre (1869), a stage version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre which can be regarded as the first significant evidence of works by the Brontë sisters appearing in Spain. Morera’s text is based on the French stage version by Lefèvre and Royer (1855), which was, in turn, inspired by the German adaptation by...

The purpose of this paper is to examine “El abogado de Cuenca”, a short story written by José Joaquín de Mora (1783-1864) and included in his literary annual No me olvides in 1826. This narrative was produced in an Anglo-Spanish context as it was written when he was exiled in England and was published by the London-based publisher Rudolph Ackermann...

Resumen Resumen Este artículo analiza Ensayo sobre la literatura inglesa, obra de Joaquín Henrich y Girona publicada en 1881 que puede considerarse la primera historia completa de la literatura inglesa escrita en español. Su publicación se enmarca en una fase de la recepción de la literatura inglesa en España en la que crece el conocimiento y el i...

José Joaquín de Mora (1783-1864) is a central figure in the early stages of the reception of Byron in Spain, acting first as a detractor of the English poet and later on, after his exile in England, as a fervent admirer of his poetry. Although written in the 1830s, Mora’s Don Juan, a rewriting of Byron’s homonymous poem, was not published until 184...

This paper explores how literature circles were introduced in the EFL lessons of a group of 3 rd year ESO students. Literature circles are school book clubs in which the students form small groups in order to discuss a text. They were first used in American Elementary Schools to promote literacy in the 1980s, but soon they began to be introduced in...