A conference analyses Martí de Riquerʼs figure one year after his death

Martí de Riquer.
Martí de Riquer.
(28/10/2014)

On Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 October, the Aula Magna of the Historic Building host the conference Martí de Riquer i la Universitat de Barcelona: El llegat intel·lectual i humà, within the 1st anniversary of this death. The rector of the University of Barcelona, Dídac Ramírez, opens the conference that includes lectures pronounced by university lecturers who were his students, experts on his work, for example the member of the Royal Spanish Academy Francisco Rico, and personalities from publishing companies, for instance José Manuel Lara.

Martí de Riquer.
Martí de Riquer.
28/10/2014

On Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 October, the Aula Magna of the Historic Building host the conference Martí de Riquer i la Universitat de Barcelona: El llegat intel·lectual i humà, within the 1st anniversary of this death. The rector of the University of Barcelona, Dídac Ramírez, opens the conference that includes lectures pronounced by university lecturers who were his students, experts on his work, for example the member of the Royal Spanish Academy Francisco Rico, and personalities from publishing companies, for instance José Manuel Lara.

Lectures analyse Martí de Riquer as romanist, reader and editor, university lecturer and expert on The Quixote. The conference is organised by the Faculty of Filology together with the Department of Romance Languages. The CRAI Faculty of Philology also organises an exhibition of books and photographs of the expert.

Born in 1914, Professor De Riquer is considered the most important romanist in Catalonia and an expert on Catalan Medieval literature and the Spanish Golden Age. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 1965, president of the Royal Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona (1963-1996) and corresponding member of several foreign institutions, Martí de Riquer received many honours, such as the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (1997), the Cross of Sant Jordi (1992), the National Prize for Spanish Literature (2000), the Menéndez Pelayo International Award, the Spanish National Essay Award, the award conferred by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation, etc. Moreover, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sapienza University and the University of Liège.
 Martí de Riquer Morera graduated in Philosophy and Art from the University of Barcelona, where he started to give lessons in 1942. In 1944, he obtained a doctoral degree in Madrid with the thesis Traducciones castellanas de Ausias March en la literatura castellana del Siglo de Oro. Then, in 1950, he became the first professor of History of Romance Literatures and he held this position until he retired in 1984. In 1965, he was appointed vice-rector of the UB. From 1987 to 1990 he was Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Philology.
He revitalized Medieval Literature studies. He is the author of more than 300 publications. He started researching in the field of humanism and court poetry, and later he centred on troubadour poetry, Spanish Golden Age literature, chivalresque literature and Romance and Arthurian literatures. He is the author of a vast prestigious work, which includes prestigious editions of Tirant lo Blanch and Don Quixote, and books such as Quinze generacions dʼuna família catalana and Reportajes de la historia (2010), written together with his son Borja. He translated some Catalan authors; Cerverí de Girona, Bernat Metge, Antoni Canals, Jordi de Sant Jordi and Andreu Febrer are some of them. Furthermore, he published several anthologies of Catalan, Spanish and world literature.
He was the grandson of the painter and poet Alexandre de Riquer, and father of the historian and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona Borja de Riquer, and of Isabel and Alexandra de Riquer, UB professors of Romance Languages and Latin, respectively.