Professor Robert Archer

robert.archer@kcl.ac.uk Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2208 Fax: + 44 (020) 7848 2207 Address: Department of Spanish & Spanish American Studies King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS  

• Spanish literature fifteenth to seventeenth century
• Catalan literature
• Literature of misogyny and defence of women
• Theory of metaphor
• Editing medieval and early modern texts
• Translation
 
Key words: Spain Catalonia Misogyny Metaphor Women Texts Translation

Robert Archer has worked all his career across the two domains of Spanish and Catalan. A substantial part of his published work concerns the poetry of the great fifteenth-century Valencian Ausiàs March: he wrote his doctoral thesis on March in relation to theories of metaphor (published in 1985 as The Pervasive Image. The Role of Analogy in the Poetry of Ausiàs March, Amsterdam: John Benjamins) and brought out a critical edition in 1997, Ausiàs March. Obra completa (Barcelona, Barcanova), which he is now revising for a new edition in Spanish for Castalia. His other work covers many aspects of medieval and Golden Age poetry, drama and prose. His most recent books include an anthology of texts about women (Misoginia y defensa de las mujeres. Una antología de textos medievales, Cátedra, 2000), a critical edition of the bilingual poet Pere Torroella (Obra completa (Fondazione Rubbettino, 2004) and The Problem of Woman in Late-Medieval Hispanic Literature (Tamesis, 2006). Among the work that has given him most personal satisfaction are his translations, especially his poetic versions of Ausiàs March (Ausiàs March. Thirty Verse Translations, Fundació Carulla/Tamesis, 2006).

At King´s Robert teaches a number of courses on fifteenth to seventeenth century literature, including one on Cervantes and another on film versions of Don Quijote.

Robert was a ‘late starter’, working in various jobs in a number of countries before putting himself through A-levels and then taking a First in Spanish at Durham when he was 27. He finished his DPhil at Oxford in 1980, and then taught at La Trobe University, Melbourne, until 1997, with lengthy and frequent spells in Spain. In 1998 he was appointed to the Chair at Durham, and in 2005 to the Cervantes Chair at King´s. He was elected the first Fellow in Hispanic Studies of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1994, and in 2000 corresponding member of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona and of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.