Form and Subject in Iberian Literature, 854–1492

RLL doctoral candidate Adam Mahler (Spanish & Portuguese) will defend his doctoral dissertation, Form and Subject in Iberian Literature, 854–1492, on April 24, 10:30 a.m., in Boylston G35 and on Zoom. The dissertation argues that poetic form in medieval Iberia was not inherited but made—that is, socially precipitated, and with material antecedents. Closely reading Galician-Portuguese, Old Spanish, and Hebrew lyric poetry alongside legislation, inquisitorial records, sediment analyses, and other non-literary sources, it theorizes a non-modern sound studies attuned to the lived history of verse forms, across axes such as class and ethnorace. Three case studies examine the ecopoetics of Dom Dinis, early attestations of Blackness in the invective tradition, and the commodification of the Romance vernacular within the Ibero-Jewish courtier class. The defense is open to all, with a reception to follow.