Alan Deyermond FBA

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 (24 February 1932 - 19 September 2009) was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 professor of Medieval Spanish Literature and Hispanist

Hispanist

A Hispanist is a scholar specialising in Hispanic studies, that is Spanish or Portuguese language, literature, linguistics, or civilization, and by extension, Basque, Catalan and Galician....

. His obituary cited him as the English-speaking world's leading scholar of medieval Hispanic literature. He spent his academic career associated with one college, Queen Mary and Westfield.

Deyermond started his career in 1955 as a lecturer at Westfield College

Westfield College

Westfield College was a small college situated in Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, London, and was a constituent college of the University of London from 1882 to 1989. The college originally admitted only women as students and became coeducational in 1964. In 1989, Westfield College merged with Queen...

, London. When Westfield merged with Queen Mary College

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 in 1992, he moved to the Mile End

Mile End

Mile End is an area within the East End of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross...

 site.

Biography

Deyermond was born in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Egypt. He returned to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 with his family shortly before World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 broke out. He began his schooling in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, and switched to Jersey

Jersey

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...

 in 1946. He entered Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. As of 2009, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £44.9 million.-History:...

 in 1950 on a scholarship, to read Modern Languages. However, an upper-level course which introduced Medieval Spanish Literature showed him that much fruitful research could be accomplished in that field, and he turned his focus.

In 1953 Deyermond began BLitt research. He published his first article in 1954. He became an assistant lecturer at Westfield in 1955; he received his advanced degree in 1957. Also in 1957, he married Ann Bracken, a History graduate St. Hugh's College, Oxford (they had one daughter, Ruth). He became a tenured professor in 1969. During 1986-1989 he was the vice-principal of Westfield.

Deyermond was a vegetarian from the age of 50 and a lifelong advocate of animal well-being and humane treatment. He was an active supporter of women's rights and feminist academic freedom. He was a member of the Liberal Party in the 1950s and 1960s, when he was involved in the Radical Reform Group. Throughout his life, he was an active member of the Anglican Church. He died on 19 September 2009.

Published works

Deyermond's published output was prodigious – 40 books, written or edited, and almost 200 articles ranging through four centuries of medieval Hispanic literature. He recognized that a comprehensive study of Medieval literature would require several tooks which exist for studies in English but which were lacking for Spanish. He particularly lamented the lack of complete dictionaries, bibliographies and historical syntheses; as a result he authored the medieval volume for the Ernest Benn History of Spanish Literature (1969), which addressed the lack of an historical synthesis.

His volumes of History and Criticism of Spanish Literature (1980 and 1991) carry an in-depth bibliography. A twenty-year research effort culminated in Lost Literature of the Castilian Middle Ages (1995), which Deyermond cited as his favourite work. His last major book addressed English Literature: he edited A Century of British Medieval Studies for the British Academy (2007).

Deyermond founded the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar (1968) at Westfield, which has come to attract scholars from around the world. As part of the Seminar's scope, Deyermond began publishing (1995) the Publications of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar, which carried articles that would be too long for a journal but not book-length. Some sixty volumes were issued, with Deyermond performing nearly all the work.

Deyermond participated in founding Tamesis Books (now part of Boydell & Brewer

Boydell & Brewer

Boydell & Brewer is an academic press based in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England that specializes in publishing historical and critical works. In addition to British and general history, the company publishes three series devoted to studies, editions, and translations of material related to the...

) and of the series Research Bibliographies & Checklists, from Grant & Cutler.

Partial list of published works

• Alan Deyermond, A Century of British Medieval Studies (British Academy Centenary Monographs, 2007)
• Alan Deyermond, Keith Whinnom, Jeremy Lawrance, The Textual History and Authorship of Celestina (Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, 2007)
• Alan Deyermond, David Graham Pattison, Eric Southworth, Peter Edward Russell Mio Cid Studies: 'some Problems of Diplomatic' Fifty Years on (Dept. of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, 2002)
• Alan Deyermond, Point of View in the Ballad: The Prisoner, The Lady and the Shepherd and Others (Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1996)
• Alan Deyermond, Historical Literature in Medieval Iberia (Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1996)
• Alan Deyermond, La literatura perdida de la Edad Media castellana: catálogo y estudio, I: Épica y romances, Obras de Referencia, 7 (Salamanca: Ediciones Univ. de Salamanca)
• Alan Deyermond, Historia De La Literatura Espanola : La Edad Media (Letras e ideas (Editorial Ariel, 1995)
• Alan Deyermond, Jeremy Lawrance (eds), Letters and Society in Fifteenth-century Spain: Studies Presented to P.E. Russell on His Eightieth Birthday (Dolphin Book Co., 1993)
• Alan Deyermond, Tradiciones y puntos de vista en la ficción sentimental (UNAM, 1993)
• Alan Deyermond and Charles Davis (eds.), Golden Age Spanish Literature: Studies in Honour of John Varey by His Colleagues and Pupils (Westfield College, 1991)
• Alan Deyermond, "Mio Cid" Studies (Támesis Books, 1977)
• Alan Deyermond, The Lost Literature of Medieval Spain: Notes for a Tentative Catalogue (Medieval Research Seminar, Department of Spanish, Westfield College, 1977)
• Alan Deyermond, Lazarillo de Tormes: A Critical Guide (Grant and Cutler, 1975)
• Alan Deyermond, Historia de la literatura española: La edad media (Editorial Ariel, 1973)
• Alan Deyermond, A Literary History of Spain: The Middle Ages (Barnes & Noble, 1971)
• Alan Deyermond, Epic Poetry and the Clergy: Studies on the Mocedades de Rodrigo (Tamesis Books, 1968)
• Alan Deyermond, The Petrarchan Sources of La Celestina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)

Honours

Deyermond became a fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 in 1988. In June 2009 he was elected corresponding Fellow of the Real Academia Española

Real Academia Española

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...

, a distinction granted very few foreign academics.

Honours were heaped upon him by scholarly societies worldwide. When he retired in 1997, two festschrift

Festschrift

In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...

s were issued in his honour (the first such issue in his honour was compiled by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

scholars in 1986). He fulfilled several visiting professorships and gave hundreds of lectures and conference papers in over a dozen countries.

Deyermond received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Valencia and Georgetown. He was a Fellow of the British Academy and this year became one of the small number of corresponding members of the Real Academia Española. In 1994 he was awarded the Nebrija Prize, given each year by the University of Salamanca to the non-Spanish scholar who has contributed most to the understanding of Spanish culture and the Spanish language.

A reflection of his standing in the world of Hispanism and medieval studies was his presidency of the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (1992–95; honorary life president since 1995) and of the International Courtly Literature Society (1983). In 1985 he was made a socio de honor of the Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval and, since 1999, an honorary fellow of Queen Mary, University of London.