Helena de Carlos Villamarín

Profesora Titular de Filoloxía Latina, USC

helena.decarlos@usc.es

Tel. 881811878.

Helena de Carlos é Profesora Titular de Filoloxía Latina, USC (acreditada a Cátedra en marzo 2016).

My research career starts with a degree dissertation entitled ‘Engaño y teatralidad en la novela antigua’ defended in 1989. In this piece of work I analysed ancient fiction written in Latin and Greek. In parallel, I was awarded a scholarship under the Research Staff Education Plan to study a PhD on Mediaeval Studies and herewith I grew an interest in Mediaevalism and based my thesis, defended in December 1992, on this period. It was then that I started forging ties with Florence and the Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino owing to a scholarship by the Fondazione Ezio Franceschini which allowed me to work in 1992-1993 collaborating in the bibliography annual directory Medioevo Latino and hence deepened my knowledge in Mediaeval Latin. Such insight became more comprehensive upon my return to Santiago when I was involved in a research project as part of a team directed by Professor Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, which meant I became further acquainted with the authors and texts of the Iberian Middle Ages contained in the Index Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi Hispanorum. For this reason, I travelled to numerous Spanish and European libraries for research purposes. Texts from the Spanish Middle Ages, particularly from the Visigothic period down to the 12th century, have formed the backbone of my research, earlier addressed in my thesis and later approached in the book Las Antigüedades de Hispania, published in Spoleto in 1996 by the Centro Internazionale di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo. This book received highly favourable reviews in prestigious international journals such as Speculum, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, Deutsches Archiv or Habis. It explains how Spanish Mediaeval Historiography viewed Hispania before the Roman influence, its founding heroes and its aetiological myths.

Along these years, I was also invited to pronounce conferences in other Spanish universities, such as Valladolid or Valencia, and international universities such as Toulouse-Le Mirail, Oxford or Venice. In 2013 I enjoyed a four-month research trip to the University of Freiburg i. Breisgau, in relation to the Mittellateinisches Seminar, where I deepened in my knowledge on Isidore of Seville and allegorical scripts in the Middle Ages, thanks to the rich material found in this institution’s library. As a consequence, I have recently completed a work on a Visigothic Codex, probably copied in Tarragona and brought to Tuscany, annotated by an enigmatic hand from an unknown origin. This paper will be published in the renowned collection "Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven Mediävistischer Forschung. Beiheften" by De Gruyter.

​

My other research line focused on Troy in the Middle Ages. I am co-founder and current director of Troianalexandrina, an annual journal publishing articles on Classical issues in the Middle Ages, which was launched in 2001 and has been printed by Brepols Publishers for the past ten years. This line of work continues with my papers on the Galician Mediaeval Trojan Chronicle (for instance in Verba in 1989), on poets such as Godfrey of Rheims, published in magazines as The Journal of Medieval Latin, or more recently, the book La versión de Excidium Troie de un códice toledano (Madrid, BN 10049), published in 2012 by the Spanish Research Seminar of Queen Mary’s College in London. These articles have led to my participation on Spanish and international congresses, organised by Mediaevalist Committees as well as the supervision of papers by young graduates.

Academia.edu       Dialnet      Google Académico