Thomas More and Spain

This volume traces Th. More’s intellectual and political connections with Spain through eight scholarly contributions. Olivares examines Erasmus’s role in linking Arias Montano to More’s legacy amid Counter-Reformation censorship. Cabrillana decodes More’s Lucian translations to reveal his moral-aesthetic priorities, while Phelippeau juxtaposes ‘Utopia’ with Venetian governance models resisting Habsburg hegemony. Ureña explores digital humanities’ challenges in Morean studies, and Lillo reconstructs Spanish accounts of More’s trial through several manuscripts. Fuentes analyzes Mary Tudor’s Erasmian translations, and Zunino maps Sevillian networks that cultivated More’s posthumous reputation via Herrera’s 1592 biography. The volume concludes with the editor’s exploration of More and Vives’ nuanced just-war theories, challenging some naive pacifist interpretations by contextualizing their pragmatic responses to Ottoman expansion. Bridging literary analysis, archival research, and transnational historiography, these essays illuminate Spain’s enduring role in shaping More’s critique of power and his Renaissance afterlife.

Aquest volum traça les connexions intel·lectuals de Thomas More amb Espanya a través de huit contribucions acadèmiques. Olivares examina el paper d’Erasme en la vinculació d’Arias Montano amb el llegat de Moro enmig de la censura de la Contrareforma. Cabrillana desxifra les traduccions de Llucià fetes per More per a revelar les seues prioritats esteticomorals, mentre que Phelippeau juxtaposa ‘Utopia’ amb els models de govern venecians que resisteixen a l’hegemonia dels Habsburg. Ureña explora els reptes de les humanitats digitals en els estudis sobre Moro, i Lillo reconstrueix els relats espanyols del judici de Moro a través de diversos manuscrits. Fuentes analitza les traduccions erasmistes de María Tudor i Zunino traça un mapa de les xarxes sevillanes que van cultivar la reputació pòstuma de Moro a través de la biografia d’Herrera de 1592. El volum conclou amb l’estudi per part de l’editor de les matisades teories de More i Vives sobre la guerra justa, desafiant algunes interpretacions pacifistes ingènues en contextualitzar les seues respostes pragmàtiques a l’expansió otomana. En unir l’anàlisi literària, la investigació d’arxius i la historiografia transnacional, aquests assajos il·luminen el paper perdurable d’Espanya en la configuració de la crítica de Moro al poder i la seua vida posterior en el Renaixement.

Concepcion Cabrillana Leal  is Professor of Latin Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela. She has been visiting scholar at the universities of Oxford, Amsterdam and Liege, having participated in several international research projects. A specialist in Latin syntax, she has translated works by authors such as Terentius or Tacitus. In recent years she has published several Spanish translations of works by Thomas More –Epigramas (2012); Cartas de un humanista (I and II; 2018 and 2021)– and actively participated in Moreana.

Isabel M. Fuentes Martínez (BA 2019; MA 2020 in English Studies, Universidad de Jaén) has done research on women’s education in the Early Modern Period and its relationship with Humanism, especially in England. During the third year of her BA, she was an Erasmus student at the University of Leeds (England). She was the holder of a scholarship to collaborate with the English Department at the Universidad de Jaén, and of a fellowship to work on her Master’s dissertation. At present, she is a free-lance researcher and would like to become a librarian.

Víctor Lillo Castañ  is a Margarita Salas research fellow at the Max Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte (Frankfurt) and the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. He has published extensively on Thomas More and Spain, has co-edited Saberes inestables: estudios sobre expurgación y censura en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2018) and has recently authored a critical edition of the first Spanish translation of More’s Utopia, El buen estado de la república de Utopía (en traducción de Vasco de Quiroga, Clásicos Políticos del Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2020).

Miguel Martínez López  is a Full Professor of English Studies and Department Chair at the University of Valencia. In his work in the foreign service, he has served as Consul of Education in Miami and as Education and Science Commissioner at the Embassies of Spain in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa. A Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Yale, Professor Martínez has published over one hundred works, with a primary focus on utopian and dystopian literature, particularly the writings of Thomas More. Among his recent publications in this field are «Ius ad bellum and ius in bello in Thomas More’s Utopia» (2022), Glossae, and El Ocaso de Koinonia. La Distopía en la Literatura de los EE. UU., co-authored with A. Burgos (PUV, 2024).

Eugenio M. Olivares Merino  (BA Granada 1990; PhD Granada 1994) teaches Medieval and Early Modern English literature as a Senior Lecturer at the Universidad de Jaén (Spain). He has published monographs on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf and Margaret More Roper and is the author of several articles, both in Spanish and international journals. He was Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Urbana-Champaign (1992) and Yale (2003). Currently, he is the Coordinator of the Online Master in English Studies (English Department, Universidad de Jaén) and IP1 of the Project «Thomas More and Spain».

Marie-Claire Phélippeau is a retired Professor of English language and Literature and former Editor of the journal Moreana (2008-2017). She is the current President of the Society Amici Thomae Mori. She holds a doctorate from the Université de La Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III (1997). She has published a number of articles and book chapters on More, Renaissance humanists and Utopia. She is the author of the biography Thomas More (Gallimard, 2016); a translation of More’s Last Things as Mise en garde avant l’Enfer (2017).

Inmaculada Ureña Asensio , who holds a BA and an MA in English Studies from the Universidad de Jaén, is a PhD candidate at that institution, where she is currently working on the fields of Thomas More Studies and Digital Humanities. She is a researcher in the international project «Thomas More and Spain». For her thesis dissertation, she is encoding and tagging with TEI the Spanish translation of Thomas More’s Utopia rendered by Gerónimo de Medinilla in 1637.

Cinta Zunino Garrido  is a Senior Lecturer at the Universidad de Jaén, where she teaches English literature. In 2012, Dr. ZuninoGarrido authored Mimesis and the Representation of Experience. Dramatic Theory and Practice in pre-Shakespearean Comedy (1560-1590), for which she obtained the award to the best book of literary criticism for 2013 by the Spanish Association of English Studies (AEDEAN), and was shortlisted in 2014 by the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE). Dr. Zunino Garrido has been a researcher in the international project «Thomas More and Spain». She is the current president of the board of tenured faculty at the Universidad de Jaén, and deputy head of the English Department.

INTRODUCTION

1 Introducing Arias Montano to Thomas More: The Role of Erasmus of Rotterdam

2 Thomas More as Translator: Typology and Functions of some Morean Features in his Version of Lucian’s Cynicus

3 Renaissance Venice: a Utopian Republic Resisting the Spanish Empire

4 Digital Humanities and Thomas More Studies: State and Challenges

5 The Trial and Execution of Thomas More in two Castilian Accounts of 1535 and in the Cronica del Rey Enrico Otavo de Ingalaterra (c. 1550)

6 Mary Tudor’s Part in the English Translation of Erasmus’ Paraphrases

7 Fernando de Herrera, Arias Montano and their Coterie: Some Notes about the Genesis of Tomas Moro (1592)

8 Peacefulness vs. Pacificism: War and Peace in Thomas More and Juan Luis Vives