Dr Robert Oakley Ph.D, MA, PGCE

Department of Modern Languages
Honorary Research Fellow in Hispanic Studies

Contact details

Address
Ashley Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I taught Spanish, Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature at the University of Birmingham for 31 years, retiring in 1998.

Biography

Dr Robert J Oakley, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Dr Oakley taught both Portuguese and Spanish in the Department from 1967 until his retirement, but continues to carry out research and publish on his areas of interest. His specialist fields are Spanish literature of the Golden Age and Luso-Brazilian Studies. He has published articles and a book on the seventeenth-century Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina.  He has translated the medieval chronicler Fernão Lopes into English and has a long-standing interest in 20th-century Brazilian prose fiction; particularly the works of Lima Barreto, on whom he has published a major study, The Case of Lima Barreto and Realism in the Brazilian Belle Époque (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998).

Dr Oakley has acted as External Examiner in Spanish and Portuguese in a number of British universities. He regularly visits Brazil. In 2004, he was awarded a Visiting Professor scholarship by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture which enabled him to spend two semesters teaching Comparative Literature at postgraduate level in the State University of Sao Paulo in 2004-5. In 2009 he was again awarded a scholarship which enabled him to teach for a semester at the State University of Parana in Londrina.

Research

The course that Dr Oakley devised for the postgraduate seminar in Londrina, State of Parana, forms a part of an ambitious comparative study that seeks a grammar of urban realism in the literatures of Western Europe and Brazil. In the last five years, Dr Oakley has also returned to his study of Lima Barreto and has created a Brazilian-Portuguese version of his book of 1998. This revised version is to be published by the State University of Sao Paulo in 2011.

Publications

Books

  • (with Derek, W. Lomax)  The English in Portugal:  1367-87.  Warminster:  Aris & Phillips, 1988.  367 pp.
  • El condenado por desconfiado. Tirso de Molina.  London:  Grant & Cutler, 1994.  142 pp.
  • The Case of Lima Barreto and Realism in the Brazilian ‘Belle Epoque’.  Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter:  Lewiston, Queenston e Lampeter:  The Edward Mellen Press, 1998.  216 pp.
  • Lima Barreto e o destino da literatura.  São Paulo/Assis:  Editora da UNESP.  In press. 

Articles in journals

  • ‘A chronicler of Lisbon’, In Vida Hispánica, 21, 1973, pp. 21-25.
  • ‘Lima Barreto e a arte de escrever romances’, In Ocidente, Número Especial, 1974, pp. 23-31.
  • ‘Ambientação nos romances de Lima Barreto’, In Líttera, 13, 1975, pp. 31-43.
  • ‘Cidades e serras queirozianas’, In Líttera, 16, 1976, pp. 93-105.
  • Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma and the New California’, In Modern Language Review, 78, 1983, pp. 838-49.
  • ‘Lima Barreto e o destino da inteligência:  uma leitura de A Biblioteca’, In Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais, 889, 15/10/83.
  • ‘El-Dorado revisitado:  uma leitura de A Nova Califórnia’, In Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais, 922, 02/06/84.
  • ‘Time and space in El condenado por desconfiado’, In Forum for Modern Language Studies, 21, 1985, pp.257-72.
  • (com E. Oakley) ‘A tempestade de Shakespeare e o Novo Mundo’, In Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais, 989, 14/09/85.
  • Vida e Morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá:  a Carlyleian view of Brazilian history’, In Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 63, 1986, pp. 339-53.
  • (with M. Stratil) ‘A disputed authorship study of two plays attributed to Tirso de Molina’, In Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2, 1987, pp. 153-60.
  • ‘The reader and the writer in Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha’, In Portuguese Studies, 3, 1987, pp.126-48.
  • Don Alvaro o la fuerza de la historia’, In Archivo Hispalense, 73, 1990, pp. 71-94.
  • ‘Alfa e Omega:  Clara dos Anjos;  um romance revisitado’, In Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais, 1169, 07/09/91.
  • ‘Itinerário do poeta de Macunaíma:  uma leitura de “A meditação sobre o Tietê”’, In Revista de Letras, São Paulo/Assis, 40, 2000, pp. 63-76.
  • ‘Ilusões perdidas na Belle époque carioca’, In Matraga, Rio de Janeiro:  UERJ, 17, 2005, pp. 81-88.

Articles in books

  • ‘The problematic unity of Guzmán de Alfarache’ In Hispanic Studies in Honour of Joseph Manson.  Oxford:  The Dolphin Book Co., 1972, pp. 185-206.
  • ‘La vida y la muerte en El condenado por desconfiado’.  In Homenaje a Alberto Navarro González:  Teatro del Siglo de Oro.  Kassel:  Edition Reichenberger, 1990, pp. 497-503.
  • Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma and the Shadow of Spencerism’ In New Frontiers in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Scholarship:  ‘Como se fue el maestro’.  For Derek W. Lomax in Memoriam.    Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter:  The Edward Mellen Press, 1994, pp. 255-74.
  • ‘Lima Barreto’s menippean satire in its historical context’ In Portuguese, Brazilian and African Studies:  Studies presented to Clive Willis on his retirement. Warminster:  Aris & Phillips, 1995, pp. 265-84.
  • La mujer que manda en casa y el desafío de una teoría’ In Actas del Congreso Internacional “Mira de Amescua y el teatro español del siglo XVII”.  Granada:  Aula-Biblioteca Mira de Amescua, 1996, pp. 367-78.
  • Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma:  passado, presente y futuro’ In Lima Barreto:  Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, Edição CríticaEdited by Antônio Houaiss and Carmem Lúcia Negreiros de Figueiredo.
    Paris/Madrid:  Edição Archivos/UNESCO, ALLCA XX, 1998, pp. 286-92.
  • Corpo Vivo’s Second Hero and the Age of Iron’ In Fiction in the Portuguese-Speaking WorldFestscrift para Alexandre Pinheiro Torres, edited by Charles M. Kelly.  Cardiff:  University of Wales Press, 2000, pp. 246-63.
  • ‘El desafío dramático del Libro de Rut:  análisis temporal y espacial de La mejor espigadera de Tirso de Molina’ In Hispanismo 2002 (3v), v. 2.  Edited by Adrián P. Fanjul, Ana Cecília Olmos e Mario M. González.  São Paulo:  Humanitas, 2002, pp. 232-35.