When my father received his MND diagnosis in early 2017, he had just one question. Pointing to his head, he asked “Will I keep this?” to which the consultant replied, “I’m afraid you will”.
Terry knew what he would do with the time he would be given. Aware that it might not be completed, he planned a series of publications that would occupy him for the next six years. I was fortunate to be able to assist in this endeavour, and it taught me much about him and his scholarly interests and teachings.
Some of the following bibliographical memoir comes from Terry himself, as he produced a short reflection on his teaching and research in the weeks before he died.
Combined with the 2009 Festschrift edition of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies [1] and the tribute by the Spanish department at University College Cork in November 2023,[2] and my recollection of conversations with him and our work together during his illness, I have tried to capture, linearly, the personal contexts in which his scholarly work was completed.
I am grateful to Stephen Boyd, Terry’s great friend and colleague, for his reading of a draft text.
Tom O'Reilly, 2024
Barry Taylor and Isabel Torres
Nuala Finnegan, Stephen Boyd and Martín Veiga
Terence O’Reilly’s principal field of research was the literature, history and art of Spain during the Golden Age (c.1470–1700), especially the prose of the period (chivalric, pastoral and picaresque fiction), religious writings (Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross) and the paintings of El Greco and Velázquez.
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