Conversations in Granada: Jean Canavaggio and Patricia Marín Cepeda

Unabridged video of the conversation on 25 April 2016 between the Hispanist Jean Canavaggio and the lecturer Patricia Marín Cepeda at the Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada, as part of the season of Literary Conversations organised by the Granada UNESCO City of Literature Programme under the umbrella of the city’s Book Fair.

Jean Canavaggio (b. Paris, 1936), is a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Paris and one of the most highly reputed Hispanists in the world. A full member of the Hispanic Society, correspondent of the Real Academia Española and Real Academia de Historia, he has published Cervantes (winner of the 1986 Goncourt biography prize) and Cervantès dramaturge: un théâtre à naître. He has coordinated a history of Spanish literature, and directed the new French translation of the prose works of Cervantes for the Pléiade Library imprint of the Gallimard publishing house.

Patricia Marín Cepeda (b. Madrid, 1981) holds a doctorate in Hispanic philology from the University of Valladolid. Over the last decade she has studied and made known a number of unpublished texts from Spain’s Siglo de Oro from the viewpoint of the history of the court, the history of literature and forensic linguistics. Her most recent publication is the monograph Cervantes y la Corte de Felipe II: Escritores en el entorno del cardenal Ascanio Colonna (1560-1608), Madrid, Polifemo, 2015. This study traces for the first time the history of Cervantes’s circle of writer friends in the context of the factions at court and in politics during the reign of Philip II. She has taught at the University of Valladolid (2007-2009), University of Cincinnati (2010-11), Università degli Studi di Roma Tre (2011-2013) and University of Jaén (2014), and did postdoctoral research in the humanities department at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She currently teaches in the philology department at the University of Burgos.