Great loss for Hispanists: Dr Antony Close suddenly died in Cambridge on Friday, 17 September 2010.  

Dr Close, retired Reader in Spanish Old Comedy, was a member of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese since 1967 (HoD 2001-2003), and President of AISO 2005-2008. His funeral took place on Monday 27 September. Contributions in his memory may be made to Amnesty International of which Anthony was a member.  

A memorial event for Anthony took place on 15 October 2011 at Emmanuel College.  Clare College has started a fund-raising campaign to establish The Anthony Close Scholarship in Spanish Golden Age Studies. If you would like to make a donation and for further information, please refer to this page.

* Please see blog of the Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro (AISO) for tributes and other information: click here.

* Obituary in El Pais.

* Obituary in The Guardian.

* Further tributes and comments.

Anthony Close specialised in Cervantes, Spanish Golden Age comedy, Renaissance literature and society, critical theory, history of ideas and aesthetics. He published up to one hundred articles ranging from Cervantes, Garcilaso, Mateo Alemán, Tirso de Molina and Gracián, to Foucault and Salman Rushdie. He is the author of The Romantic Approach to Don Quixote (1978), La Concepción Romántica del Quijote (2005), Cervantes and the Comic Mind of his Age(2000).  Cervantes Don Quixote (1990), A companion to Don Quixote (2008), a Spanish translation of which is to be posthumously published. He received a collection of essays in his hommage under the title El Ingenioso Hidalgo (2009).

Anthony Close was member of the Executive Committee of the "Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro" (AISO), and a member of the international "Asociación de Cervantistas" from 1989, joining the Executive Committee from 2004 until 2009.