One of Spain’s most distinguished literary scholars, Víctor García de la Concha is the author of seminal studies of early modern literature, including El arte literario de Santa Teresa, Nueva lectura del Lazarillo, and Al aire de su vuelo: estudios sobre Santa Teresa, fray Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz y Calderón de la Barca. He has also given masterful readings to 20th-century Spanish poets (La poesía española de posguerra, León Felipe: itinerario poético, and La poesía española de 1935 a 1975) and to modern novels from Spain and Latin America (Cinco novelas en clave simbólica).  A graduate of the University of Oviedo in his native Asturias and of the Gregorian University in Rome, he taught at the universities of Valladolid, Murcia and Zaragoza before winning appointment to the prestigious Catedra de Literatura Española at the University of Salamanca.  Following his exceptional three terms as Director of the Real Academia Española (1998-2010), he was named Director of the Instituto Cervantes, a position that makes him a member of the Harvard community through the Institute’s Observatory of the Spanish Language in the United States, established in 2013.

The Raimundo Lida Memorial Lecture, which honors the late Smith Professor or Romance Languages and Literatures, Raimundo Lida (1908-1979), is made possible by the generous gift of the late Denah Levy Lida.