About

Rich came to Warwick from the University of Oxford, where he did his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, before taking up a Junior Research Fellowship in Spanish at Merton College in 2015. He has also held lectureships at The Queen’s College, St. Catherine’s College, Christ Church, and Brasenose College.

Research interests

Rich’s main research interests are in the literature and culture of Golden-Age Spain, with a particular focus on the reception of classical authorities. He is also interested in European emblem books, in literary wit, and in translation, and has previously worked on English versions of medieval mester de clerecía poetry. He is keen to hear from research students interested in any aspect of the Golden Age.

Current projects

Rich has published on different aspects of the early modern refashioning of the classics, and is currently working on a book-length study of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean, provisionally entitled: A Measure for Measure: Moderation and the Mean in the Literature of Spain’s Golden Age. He is also completing a book chapter on the ambivalent hero of the Libro de Alexandre, and working on Cervantes’s manipulation of auctoritas in Don Quixote. Future projects will include studies of Spain’s greatest theorist of wit, Baltasar Gracián, and of the Hispanic contribution to the European tradition of pastoral writing that was so much in vogue.

Administrative roles

• Exam secretary (Hispanic Studies)
• Admissions (Hispanic Studies; term 1)
• Organizer, STVDIO Seminar Series, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance

Selected publications

• ‘Fallen Idols? Vice and Virtue in the Iconography of Icarus and Phaethon’, in Javier Muñoz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale, and Manuel Delgado, eds., The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 249-63.
• ‘Horatian Roots in Fray Luis’s Garden: Imagery and Meaning in the Vida retirada’, Hispanic Research Journal 17.3 (2016), 201-13.
• The Poem of Fernán González, trans., with Peter Such, Aris and Phillips Hispanic Classics (Oxford: Oxbow, 2015).
• Book of Alexander, trans., with Peter Such, Aris and Phillips Hispanic Classics (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009).

Qualifications

DPhil, Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
MSt, Modern Languages, University of Oxford
BA, Classics and Modern Languages, University of Oxford

SEDA-PDF Learning, Teaching and Assessing award