Professor Rodrigo Cacho
- Professor of Early Modern Iberian and Latin American Literature
Contact
Location
- Clare College Trinity Lane Cambridge CB2 1TL United Kingdom
About
Rodrigo Cacho is a scholar of the early modern world whose personal trajectory and scholarship ranges across different languages and cultures. Born in Rome from Argentinean parents, he studied Spanish and Italian at the University of Santiago de Compostela, where he was awarded a PhD in Hispanic literature. He was Teaching Fellow at the University of St Andrews and Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia before joining the University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize and awarded fellowships funded by internationally distinguished bodies, such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the Newton Trust, the British Academy, I Tatti-The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Yale University).
Rodrigo welcomes applications from PhD students working on early modern Iberian literatures and cultures as well as colonial studies.
Research
Rodrigo’s research focuses on early modern literatures and cultures of Iberia and the Americas. He is particularly interested in poetry and the ways in which it constructs subjectivity as well as sociability, with a focus on cultural exchanges across the Atlantic world. Co-editor of The Rise of Spanish American Poetry, 1500-1700: Literary and Cultural Transmission in the New World, his current monograph project, Poets of the New World: Literary Communities in Early Modern Spanish America, explores many unknown and under-studied authors and texts, offering the first holistic analysis of the development of Spanish poetry in the early stages of the colonization of the Americas. The establishment of Spanish literary practices in what was then known as the New World is inextricably tied to the personal circumstances of individuals whose lives were affected by imperialism and globalization. Born from immigrants or themselves immigrants, these poets adopted European conventions to voice their experiences as citizens dislocated and displaced between two continents. The personal circumstances of the authors studied in this monograph afford an outlook on the economic, geophysical, ideological, and emotional challenges faced by Spaniards who moved to the New World, as well as the complex process of cultural mestizaje found in these texts.
Over the years, Rodrigo’s scholarship has been concerned with a variety of early modern authors, including Garcilaso de la Vega, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Gutierre de Cetina, Luis de Góngora, Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Bernardo de Balbuena and Pedro de Oña, disseminating his research with some of the foremost publishers and academic journals, such as Criticón, Revista de Literatura, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, Bulletin Hispanique, Romanic Review, MLN, Renaissance Quarterly, Colonial Latin American Review, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies and Hispanic Review. In particular, Rodrigo devoted many years to studying the controversial and multifaceted polymath Francisco de Quevedo, with three monographs, over twenty articles and the edition of a poetic anthology published with Alianza Editorial: Lo fugitivo permanece. Antología poética.
Published works:
Recently published articles and book chapters
‘La heroica Albión: épica, fe y propaganda en La Dragontea de Lope de Vega’, Etiópicas. Revista de Letras Renacentistas 19 (2023): 195-216
‘Writing in the New World: Spanish American Poetics and the Literary Canon’, in The Places of Early Modern Criticism. Eds. Gavin Alexander, Emma Gilby, and Alexander Marr, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 125-142
‘Pleitos y peripecias de Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán: nuevos datos para la biografía de un poeta novohispano’, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 45.89 (2019): 127-161.
‘Bernardo de la Vega y los poetas perdidos del Nuevo Mundo’, Hispanic Review 87.1 (2019): 1-26
‘Colonial Poetry’, in The Cambridge Companion to Latin American Poetry. Ed. Stephen M. Hart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 3-17
‘Wonders of Nature and Political Propaganda in Pedro de Oña’s Temblor de Lima, año de 1609’, in Mirabiliratio. Das Wunderbare im Zugriff der Frühneuzeitlichen Vernunft. Ed. Christoph Strosetzki, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015, pp. 281-295
‘Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana and the American Georgic’, Colonial Latin American Review 24.2 (2015): 190-214
Monographs
La esfera del ingenio: las silvas de Quevedo y la tradición europea . Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2012
La poesía burlesca de Quevedo y sus modelos italianos. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2003 [Awarded the ‘Premio de investigación filológica Dámaso Alonso’]
Dante y Quevedo: la ‘Divina Commedia’ en los ‘Sueños’. Manchester: Manchester Spanish and Portuguese Studies, 2003 [Second edition: London: SPLASH Editions, 2020]
Edited collections
The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture, edited with Caroline Egan. London: Routledge, 2022
The Rise of Spanish American Poetry, 1500-1700: Literary and Cultural Transmission in the New World. Cambridge: Legenda, 2019 (In collaboration with Imogen Choi)
Los géneros poéticos del Siglo de Oro: centros y periferias. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2013 (In collaboration with Anne Holloway)
Teaching and supervision
Supervisor of:
Carlos Crespo