Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature

Geraldine Hazbun is Professor of Medieval Spanish Literature at the University of Oxford and Ferreras Willetts Fellow in Spanish at St Anne’s College, Oxford, UK. She is the author of Treacherous Foundations: Betrayal and Collective Identity in Early Spanish Epic, Chronicle, and Drama (2009) and Narratives of the Islamic Conquest from Medieval Spain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

“From the point of view of a historian like myself who works on illegitimacy, this is a fascinating and valuable book. Hazbun has captured the essence of illegitimacy and the fact that it is ambiguous and can be reshaped by parents, children, families, and society. … Her well-written analysis of all these different texts makes the literature she is using accessible to non-literary scholars and to students who might be interested in exploring this challenging theme.” (Grace E. Coolidge, Speculum, Vol. 98 (4), October, 2023)

• Chapter 1: The Scope of Illegitimacy.- Chapter 2: Epic Illegitimacy: the Cantar de Mio Cid and Las Mocedades de Rodrigo.- Chapter 3: Split Identity: Illegitimacy in the Romancero.- Chapter 4: Narrating Illegitimacy: the Novelas ejemplares.- Chapter 5: Lope de Vega’s Bastard Heroes: Pieces and Traces.