Biography

Rodrigo Cacho is Reader in Spanish Golden Age and Colonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on Renaissance and Baroque cultures and Spanish-American colonial literature. His publications have been concerned with literary genres such as burlesque and epic poetry, and the works of Francisco de Quevedo, including interdisciplinary approaches such as theory of painting and the art of memory. Rodrigo's recent work studies colonial poetry, especially the emergence of a new Spanish American poetics and literary culture. He is a past recipient of the SSHRC Standard Research Grant (Canada), the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, and the Philip Leverhulme Prize.

Project Summary

With the rise of colonialism in the Americas, art theory, architecture, Neoplatonism, Petrarchism and epic poetry acquired a transatlantic dimension. This monograph project offers the first holistic analysis of the emergence of Spanish American poetry and literary culture. Early modern poets of the New World were immersed in the ideas of the Renaissance. Through their works, they crafted a dialectic exchange between European traditions and the American context. By doing so, they reimagined concepts such as geography, nationhood, race and urbanism, placing the figure of the poet at the center of New World lettered cities.