Coinciding with the quatercentenary of the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes, SEDERI (Spanish and Portuguese Association for English Renaissance Studies) is organising its annual conference in collaboration with the English and Spanish departments of the University of Valladolid.
It is well known that Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio was inspired by an episode in Don Quixote and, perhaps less so, that in a short story and radio play, Anthony Burgess imagined the two writers “Meeting in Valladolid”. In fact the city – once, briefly, the capital of Spain – has particular Cervantine and Shakespearean resonances. Cervantes was living here when Don Quixote was published and his house has been open to the public since the tercentenary of his death in 1916, so visitors can experience today the atmosphere of the place where he wrote some of his Exemplary Novels. The city of Valladolid has also seen important moments in Anglo-Spanish relations during Cervantes’ and Shakespeare’s times. It hosted an English embassy sent by James I to sign the peace with Spain that put an end to the long period of war during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Philip II; a few years before, during the war, a College was founded to train English priests to return to England to minister to their fellow Catholics. It is therefore appropriate that this joint anniversary should be commemorated here.
This conference is the perfect opportunity to bring together scholars from both Spanish and English studies working on literary, historical, cultural and linguistic aspects of the early modern period.