Hazbun, Professor Geraldine

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Professor

Geraldine Hazbun

Professor in Medieval Spanish Literature
Ferreras Willetts Fellow and Tutor in Spanish

Email: geraldine.hazbun@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

Faculty Website
Academic Background

  • BA Medieval and Modern Languages - French and Spanish, University of Cambridge
  • MPhil in European Literature, University of Cambridge
  • PhD Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Literature, University of Cambridge
  • Professor of Spanish at Oxford and Fellow of St Anne's since 2005
Teaching

Medieval Spanish literature and culture

Research Interests

I work on the literature of medieval Iberia, particularly epic poetry, clerical poetry (mester de clerecía), the popular ballad tradition (romancero), chronicles, and early prose narratives.  Following a Research Fellowship with the Leverhulme Trust (2023-24), I am completing a book entitled The Form of Risk in Medieval Spanish Epic which looks at representation of risk in Spain's medieval epic tradition and asks what the epic can teach us today about risk, uncertainty, and choice.

My work to date has often explored literature from, and about, the margins of society, including subjects such as betrayal and illegitimacy, and medieval women's writing. Equally, I have written about heroism and chivalry, particularly the construction and erosion of the ideals associated with them. I am also interested in Iberian travel narratives, and the literature and culture of al-Andalus.

Selected Publications
More here

Books

The Form of Risk in Medieval Spanish Epic (in preparation).
 
A Companion to the Other Medieval Spanish Epic, ed. Geraldine Hazbun and Rebecca De Souza (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
 
Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
 

Narratives of the Islamic Conquest from Medieval Spain, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

A Companion to Spanish Women’s Studies ed. Xon de Ros & Geraldine Hazbun (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2011).

Treacherous Foundations: Betrayal and Collective Identity in Early Spanish Epic, Chronicle, and Drama, Monografías, A281 (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2009). 

Book chapters

'The Jura de Santa Gadea: Truth, Narrative and the Inbetween', in A Companion to the Other Medieval Spanish Epic, ed. Geraldine Hazbun and Rebecca De Souza (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

'The Development of Chivalry and its Literature in the Middle Ages’, in A Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry, ed. Axayácatl Campos García Rojas & Daniel Gutiérrez Trápaga (Woodbridge: Tamesis, forthcoming).

Introduction, Stanzas on the Death of his Father/Coplas por la muerte de su padre by Jorge Manrique, translated by Patrick McGuinness (Shearsman, 2021).

'Iberia', in The Cambridge Guide to Global Medieval Travel Writing ed. Sebastian Sobecki (Cambridge: UP,  2025), 322-336.

‘Kinship and Heroic Selfhood in the Historical-Epic Ballads’, in Old Ballads, New Approaches: Studies on the ‘Romancero viejo’, ed. Juan-Carlos Conde and David Hook (Oxford: Magdalen Iberian Medieval Studies Seminar, 2018), pp. 37-57

‘Memory as Mester in the Libro de Alexandre and Libro de Apolonio’, in Medieval Hispanic Studies in Memory of Alan Deyermond, ed. Andrew M. Beresford, Louise M. Haywood, Julian Weiss (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2013), pp. 91-119.

‘Lope de Vega, the Chronicle-Legend Plays and Collective Memory’, in A Companion to Lope de Vega, ed. Alexander Samson and Jonathan Thacker, Monografías A, 260 (Tamesis, 2008), 131-47

Journal Articles

‘“Más avremos adelant”: Minaya Álvar Fáñez and the Heroic Vision in the Cantar de Mio Cid’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 88.4 (2011), pp. 463-96.

‘Endings Lost and Found in the Poema de Fernán González’, Hispanic Research Journal , 9.3 (2008), 203-217, Article Weblink

‘The 1541 Crónica general and the Historical Theatre of Juan de la Cueva and Lope de Vega: An Epic Debt’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 60.1 (2008)