Research Grants by Francisco Peña Fernández
SSHRC Insight Grant
The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography (CRCMH) project positions the Gen... more The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography (CRCMH) project positions the General e Grand Estoria (GGE) within the multicultural context of its production. The GGE stands out as the largest universal history written in Medieval Europe, a truly ecumenical work in the history of both biblical exegesis and secular historiography. This allows us to reevaluate the role of Judaism and Islam, as well as the Graeco-roman classical traditions, in the birth of Spanish and European historical writing and the beginnings of vernacular fiction. The GGE was revolutionary in an age dominated by Latin literacy as it made religious history available for readers of the vernacular; a history of the human experience from Adam and Eve up to the reign of its patron, King Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252-1284).
The CRCMH team is using Digital Humanities tools to analyze the confluence of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim biblical interpretation of these stories in a document overseen by a Christian monarch. The use of our proprietary platform helps facilitate international collaboration and enables us to create an edition and translation that reflects a more comprehensive understanding of its meaning as intended by its authors. The project will focus on the first volume of the GGE with the goal of making an annotated english translation of this document available to both scholars and the general public. The following document presents a summary of the projects progress and accomplishments for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
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Books by Francisco Peña Fernández
Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe: An Interdisciplinary Study examines the phenom... more Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe: An Interdisciplinary Study examines the phenomenon of medieval eschatology from a global perspective, both geographically and intellectually. The collected contributions analyze texts, authors, social movements, and cultural representations covering a wide period, from the 6th to the 16th century, in geographically liminal spaces where Catholic, Byzantine, Islamic, and Jewish cultures converged.
The book is organized in eleven chapters which reflect and explore the following arguments: the study of specific eschatological episodes in medieval Europe and their interpretations; the analysis of apocalyptic visionaries, apocalyptic authors, and their individual contributions; the social and political implications of eschatology in medieval society; the study of medieval apocalyptic literature from a rhetorical, narratological, and historiographical perspective; the history of the transmission of apocalyptic literature and its transformation over time; and a comparative examination of apocalypticism between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era.
This study provides a lens through which academics, specialists, and interested researchers can observe and reflect on this entire eschatological universe, dwelling both on well-known texts, authors, and events, and on others which are much less popular. In gathering different paradigms, tools, and theoretical frameworks, the book exposes readers to the complex reality of medieval anxiety regarding the end of the world.
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Almuzara Universidad, 2022
Mucho se ha hablado y publicado acerca del cainismo español, pero muy poco es lo que se ha profun... more Mucho se ha hablado y publicado acerca del cainismo español, pero muy poco es lo que se ha profundizado en las raíces de tal evocación. Esta idea es, básicamente, el motor de este ensayo: rastrear la sombra del fratricida bíblico, proyectada en nuestra historia más temprana.
Planteado así el arranque, caí bien pronto en la cuenta de que el resultado de mis investigaciones podía servir, además, para abordar un espacio poco explorado o inexistente en la literatura interpretativa sobre la Biblia. Se echaba en falta un texto, accesible a un público muy amplio, que destacara el valor literario e ideológico de la Biblia, sobre todo de la Biblia hebrea, cuyo peso, tal y como se sustenta en este libro, ha sido tan grande en la narrativa histórica hispana.
El ensayo se divide en dos partes: la primera aborda los diferentes rostros del fratricida, así como la trayectoria literaria de la figura de Caín dentro de la literatura bíblica, canónica y apócrifa. El recuerdo de este personaje sirve como excusa y como guía para apreciar el virtuosismo de obras maestras de la literatura antigua como Génesis o el Libro de Samuel; en siguientes capítulos ilumina igualmente la suerte de transformaciones que, en lo religioso y en lo literario, experimentó la literatura bíblica a través de los siglos. En la segunda parte abordamos la sombra oblicua de esa personificación del fratricidio por excelencia que es Caín; muy especialmente en las narraciones de la historia de España. Desde Isidoro de Sevilla (descendiente directo de la tradición adversus iudaeos de la patrística latina) hasta apologetas como Ximénez de Rada o López de Ayala, la tradición cronística hispana aprovechó aquella temprana sombra de Caín para armar narrativas con la capacidad de avalar el desprecio a otras comunidades religiosas o explicar fratricidios con el apoyo de las Escrituras.
Francisco Peña Fernández es profesor titular de la Universidad de British Columbia en Canadá donde dirige el programa de World Literatures and Intercultural Communications e imparte cursos de mitología comparada, literatura bíblica e historia de las religiones. Sus ámbitos de investigación son la literatura bíblica -canónica y apócrifa-, las relaciones culturales, religiosas y políticas entre el cristianismo medieval y el judaísmo y el fenómeno del anti-judaísmo cristiano. En la actualidad dirige un proyecto interdisciplinar de investigación (The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography: A Digital Humanities Project) financiado por el Consejo de Investigación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de Canadá (SSHRC)
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Academia del Hispanismo, 2013
Son numerosos los motivos que hacen de El justo Lot, del dramaturgo granadino Álvaro Cubillo de A... more Son numerosos los motivos que hacen de El justo Lot, del dramaturgo granadino Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, una comedia bíblica de gran interés y originalidad. Éstos no se reducen al desafío de abordar un relato bíblico ciertamente difícil de adaptar al teatro, o de la presencia en la obra de repetidas acusaciones a la monarquía reinante, sino que también se desprenden de su propia liminalidad genérica, al situarse entre el auto sacramental y la comedia. Del primer género, El justo Lot logra sacar partido de un meticuloso trabajo exegético y una reflexión teológica cuidadosa que aborda inteligentemente los aspectos más espinosos del relato bíblico. Del segundo, la posibilidad de entretener al público con un trabajo de indudable valor cómico que no menoscaba sino que sintoniza hábilmente con la belleza de su verso y con la inteligencia con la que está diseñada la totalidad de la obra.
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Universidad de Sevilla, 2012
El tratado De fide catholica contra Iudaeos de Isidoro de Sevilla es una obra de especial interés... more El tratado De fide catholica contra Iudaeos de Isidoro de Sevilla es una obra de especial interés. Isidoro empleó los testimonia bíblicos para elaborar los dos libros del De fide: el primero un auténtico tratado de Cristología; y el segundo un tratado apologético antijudío. Se trata de un trabajo que conecta la tradición patrística antigua con la literatura polémica y antijudía medieval. Además pone de manifiesto la influencia de esta obra en las medidas antijudías de los reyes visigodos, como demuestra el hecho de que, poco tiempo después de la redacción de esta obra isidoriana, el rey Sisebuto ordenó el año 616 la conversión forzosa y consiguiente bautismo de los judíos de su reino. Por último, De fide catholica es un magnífico ejemplo de la exégesis bíblica practicada por Isidoro, cuyo afán didáctico le impulsaba a aclarar los distintos niveles de interpretación de los textos sagrados.
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Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones, 2006
A reading of José Saramago´s novel O Evanghelo segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel according to Jesu... more A reading of José Saramago´s novel O Evanghelo segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel according to Jesus Christ) in view of ancient biblically themed Jewish and Christian texts which have been excluded from the canons of the Hebrew, Protestant and Catholic Scriptures reveals a high level of what can be designated inverse intertextuality. In order to reconstruct of the life of Jesus, Saramago appropriates episodes, characters, and symbols from the Bible itself as well as from those ancient apocrypha and transforms them such that they often acquire a significance opposite to the one given them in their source texts. In this way, Saramago performs a particularly bold and personal type of exegesis which serves to overturn or dismantle certain assumptions considered essential by the Biblical tradition. Likewise, the novelist employs a series of literary and hermeneutical techniques akin to those used in ancient apochryphal texts. As in a Hebrew midrash, Saramago retells a sacred story from a different perspective, in this case that of the weak and underprivileged. Similarly, the Jewish technique of derash is echoed in his desire to fill in the gaps left unexplained in the canonical Gospels. A detailed analysis of the main characters and of recurring symbols in the novel brings to light a systematic, if at times subtle, glorification of the small and the powerless as points of resistance against those mighty forces that wish to dominate and silence them. At the center of this struggle stands a profoundly human Jesus who searches fruitlessly for answers to some of the fundamental questions that continue to plague humanity: Why did evil and pain come into the world? Why does God punish human beings? Why must man be tormented by the anguish of guilt?
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Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Francisco Peña Fernández
Conflict and Collaboration in Medieval Iberia Cover, 2020
This article presents a tentative argument supporting the role of Jewish authors or collaborators... more This article presents a tentative argument supporting the role of Jewish authors or collaborators in the making of the first chapters of Alfonso X´s General Estoria. This hypothesis begins with the most provisional evidence -the knowledge and use of specific Jewish sources- and moves, progressively, to more evidence-based arguments.
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Escenarios de Conflicto en el Teatro Bíblico Áureo. Delia Gavela (ed.). Instituto de Estudios Auriseculares., 2018
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Disobedient Practices: Textual Multiplicity in Medieval and Golden Age Spain. Anne Roberts and Belen Bistué (eds.) Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, pp. 61-84., 2015
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Encrucijada de Culturas: Alfonso X y su tiempo de frontera. Emilio González Ferrín (coord.). Cátedra Al-Andalus y Fundación 3 culturas del Mediterráneo, 2014
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http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/volumes/volume_24/Abstracts/ehum24.abstracts.pdf
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La Biblia en el teatro español. Juan Antonio Martínez Berbel y Francisco Domínguez Matito (Eds), Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo, 2012: 559-572
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"The time in which the people of the Island of Barataria liken
Don Quijote’s squire Sancho Panza... more "The time in which the people of the Island of Barataria liken
Don Quijote’s squire Sancho Panza to the figure of King Solomon,constitutes the only explicit mention of the legendary Biblical monarch in Cervantes’ entire masterpiece.
This paper seeks to show that this allusion to the figure of Solomon is actually the culmination of a series of intertextual echoes of Hebrew legends in Don Quijote. Although the
association between the squire Sancho Panza and King Solomon is evident in different ways throughout the novel, the paper focuses especially on a series of events linked to the episode of Sancho’s governorship in Barataria.
The shadow of King Solomon in Don Quijote is not only that of the monarch described in several books of the Bible, but also the mythical Solomon popularized in diverse Hebrew and specifically Judeo-Spanish legends that circulated throughout Spain in the Middle Ages."
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"Certain critics have pointed out specific connections between Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufr... more "Certain critics have pointed out specific connections between Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios and Biblical episodes or symbolism, mostly linked to the New Testament and to the figure of Paul. However, in this article I explore an Old Testament palimpsest that lies beneath this colonial text: the
story of Joseph, son of Jacob (Genesis 37-50). Not only are Joseph and Cabeza de Vaca —as portrayed in the Naufragios— typologically linked by the image of the suffering hero. The Biblical and Colonial narratives also share a common
theme: the account of a «stranger in a strange land». More importantly, I show how the chronicle follows the basic structure of this Biblical episode. Cabeza de Vaca, as does Joseph in the Old Testament, portrays himself as a suffering hero, albeit a victorious one"
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South Atlantic Review 72. Special Issue: Cultural Studies in the Spanish Golden Age (2007): 212-229.
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lasa.international.pitt.edu
Presidio, Dios: ideas para mí tan cercanas como el inmenso sufrimiento y el eterno bien. Sufrir e... more Presidio, Dios: ideas para mí tan cercanas como el inmenso sufrimiento y el eterno bien. Sufrir es morir para la torpe vida por nosotros creada, y nacer para la vida de lo bueno, única vida verdadera ¡Cuánto, cuánto pensamiento extraño agitó mi cabeza! Nunca como entonces ...
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Research Grants by Francisco Peña Fernández
The CRCMH team is using Digital Humanities tools to analyze the confluence of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim biblical interpretation of these stories in a document overseen by a Christian monarch. The use of our proprietary platform helps facilitate international collaboration and enables us to create an edition and translation that reflects a more comprehensive understanding of its meaning as intended by its authors. The project will focus on the first volume of the GGE with the goal of making an annotated english translation of this document available to both scholars and the general public. The following document presents a summary of the projects progress and accomplishments for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
Books by Francisco Peña Fernández
The book is organized in eleven chapters which reflect and explore the following arguments: the study of specific eschatological episodes in medieval Europe and their interpretations; the analysis of apocalyptic visionaries, apocalyptic authors, and their individual contributions; the social and political implications of eschatology in medieval society; the study of medieval apocalyptic literature from a rhetorical, narratological, and historiographical perspective; the history of the transmission of apocalyptic literature and its transformation over time; and a comparative examination of apocalypticism between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era.
This study provides a lens through which academics, specialists, and interested researchers can observe and reflect on this entire eschatological universe, dwelling both on well-known texts, authors, and events, and on others which are much less popular. In gathering different paradigms, tools, and theoretical frameworks, the book exposes readers to the complex reality of medieval anxiety regarding the end of the world.
Planteado así el arranque, caí bien pronto en la cuenta de que el resultado de mis investigaciones podía servir, además, para abordar un espacio poco explorado o inexistente en la literatura interpretativa sobre la Biblia. Se echaba en falta un texto, accesible a un público muy amplio, que destacara el valor literario e ideológico de la Biblia, sobre todo de la Biblia hebrea, cuyo peso, tal y como se sustenta en este libro, ha sido tan grande en la narrativa histórica hispana.
El ensayo se divide en dos partes: la primera aborda los diferentes rostros del fratricida, así como la trayectoria literaria de la figura de Caín dentro de la literatura bíblica, canónica y apócrifa. El recuerdo de este personaje sirve como excusa y como guía para apreciar el virtuosismo de obras maestras de la literatura antigua como Génesis o el Libro de Samuel; en siguientes capítulos ilumina igualmente la suerte de transformaciones que, en lo religioso y en lo literario, experimentó la literatura bíblica a través de los siglos. En la segunda parte abordamos la sombra oblicua de esa personificación del fratricidio por excelencia que es Caín; muy especialmente en las narraciones de la historia de España. Desde Isidoro de Sevilla (descendiente directo de la tradición adversus iudaeos de la patrística latina) hasta apologetas como Ximénez de Rada o López de Ayala, la tradición cronística hispana aprovechó aquella temprana sombra de Caín para armar narrativas con la capacidad de avalar el desprecio a otras comunidades religiosas o explicar fratricidios con el apoyo de las Escrituras.
Francisco Peña Fernández es profesor titular de la Universidad de British Columbia en Canadá donde dirige el programa de World Literatures and Intercultural Communications e imparte cursos de mitología comparada, literatura bíblica e historia de las religiones. Sus ámbitos de investigación son la literatura bíblica -canónica y apócrifa-, las relaciones culturales, religiosas y políticas entre el cristianismo medieval y el judaísmo y el fenómeno del anti-judaísmo cristiano. En la actualidad dirige un proyecto interdisciplinar de investigación (The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography: A Digital Humanities Project) financiado por el Consejo de Investigación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de Canadá (SSHRC)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Francisco Peña Fernández
Don Quijote’s squire Sancho Panza to the figure of King Solomon,constitutes the only explicit mention of the legendary Biblical monarch in Cervantes’ entire masterpiece.
This paper seeks to show that this allusion to the figure of Solomon is actually the culmination of a series of intertextual echoes of Hebrew legends in Don Quijote. Although the
association between the squire Sancho Panza and King Solomon is evident in different ways throughout the novel, the paper focuses especially on a series of events linked to the episode of Sancho’s governorship in Barataria.
The shadow of King Solomon in Don Quijote is not only that of the monarch described in several books of the Bible, but also the mythical Solomon popularized in diverse Hebrew and specifically Judeo-Spanish legends that circulated throughout Spain in the Middle Ages."
story of Joseph, son of Jacob (Genesis 37-50). Not only are Joseph and Cabeza de Vaca —as portrayed in the Naufragios— typologically linked by the image of the suffering hero. The Biblical and Colonial narratives also share a common
theme: the account of a «stranger in a strange land». More importantly, I show how the chronicle follows the basic structure of this Biblical episode. Cabeza de Vaca, as does Joseph in the Old Testament, portrays himself as a suffering hero, albeit a victorious one"
The CRCMH team is using Digital Humanities tools to analyze the confluence of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim biblical interpretation of these stories in a document overseen by a Christian monarch. The use of our proprietary platform helps facilitate international collaboration and enables us to create an edition and translation that reflects a more comprehensive understanding of its meaning as intended by its authors. The project will focus on the first volume of the GGE with the goal of making an annotated english translation of this document available to both scholars and the general public. The following document presents a summary of the projects progress and accomplishments for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
The book is organized in eleven chapters which reflect and explore the following arguments: the study of specific eschatological episodes in medieval Europe and their interpretations; the analysis of apocalyptic visionaries, apocalyptic authors, and their individual contributions; the social and political implications of eschatology in medieval society; the study of medieval apocalyptic literature from a rhetorical, narratological, and historiographical perspective; the history of the transmission of apocalyptic literature and its transformation over time; and a comparative examination of apocalypticism between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era.
This study provides a lens through which academics, specialists, and interested researchers can observe and reflect on this entire eschatological universe, dwelling both on well-known texts, authors, and events, and on others which are much less popular. In gathering different paradigms, tools, and theoretical frameworks, the book exposes readers to the complex reality of medieval anxiety regarding the end of the world.
Planteado así el arranque, caí bien pronto en la cuenta de que el resultado de mis investigaciones podía servir, además, para abordar un espacio poco explorado o inexistente en la literatura interpretativa sobre la Biblia. Se echaba en falta un texto, accesible a un público muy amplio, que destacara el valor literario e ideológico de la Biblia, sobre todo de la Biblia hebrea, cuyo peso, tal y como se sustenta en este libro, ha sido tan grande en la narrativa histórica hispana.
El ensayo se divide en dos partes: la primera aborda los diferentes rostros del fratricida, así como la trayectoria literaria de la figura de Caín dentro de la literatura bíblica, canónica y apócrifa. El recuerdo de este personaje sirve como excusa y como guía para apreciar el virtuosismo de obras maestras de la literatura antigua como Génesis o el Libro de Samuel; en siguientes capítulos ilumina igualmente la suerte de transformaciones que, en lo religioso y en lo literario, experimentó la literatura bíblica a través de los siglos. En la segunda parte abordamos la sombra oblicua de esa personificación del fratricidio por excelencia que es Caín; muy especialmente en las narraciones de la historia de España. Desde Isidoro de Sevilla (descendiente directo de la tradición adversus iudaeos de la patrística latina) hasta apologetas como Ximénez de Rada o López de Ayala, la tradición cronística hispana aprovechó aquella temprana sombra de Caín para armar narrativas con la capacidad de avalar el desprecio a otras comunidades religiosas o explicar fratricidios con el apoyo de las Escrituras.
Francisco Peña Fernández es profesor titular de la Universidad de British Columbia en Canadá donde dirige el programa de World Literatures and Intercultural Communications e imparte cursos de mitología comparada, literatura bíblica e historia de las religiones. Sus ámbitos de investigación son la literatura bíblica -canónica y apócrifa-, las relaciones culturales, religiosas y políticas entre el cristianismo medieval y el judaísmo y el fenómeno del anti-judaísmo cristiano. En la actualidad dirige un proyecto interdisciplinar de investigación (The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography: A Digital Humanities Project) financiado por el Consejo de Investigación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de Canadá (SSHRC)
Don Quijote’s squire Sancho Panza to the figure of King Solomon,constitutes the only explicit mention of the legendary Biblical monarch in Cervantes’ entire masterpiece.
This paper seeks to show that this allusion to the figure of Solomon is actually the culmination of a series of intertextual echoes of Hebrew legends in Don Quijote. Although the
association between the squire Sancho Panza and King Solomon is evident in different ways throughout the novel, the paper focuses especially on a series of events linked to the episode of Sancho’s governorship in Barataria.
The shadow of King Solomon in Don Quijote is not only that of the monarch described in several books of the Bible, but also the mythical Solomon popularized in diverse Hebrew and specifically Judeo-Spanish legends that circulated throughout Spain in the Middle Ages."
story of Joseph, son of Jacob (Genesis 37-50). Not only are Joseph and Cabeza de Vaca —as portrayed in the Naufragios— typologically linked by the image of the suffering hero. The Biblical and Colonial narratives also share a common
theme: the account of a «stranger in a strange land». More importantly, I show how the chronicle follows the basic structure of this Biblical episode. Cabeza de Vaca, as does Joseph in the Old Testament, portrays himself as a suffering hero, albeit a victorious one"