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International honour for Oxford language expert

6 January 2011

An Oxford University professor has become only the second living British expert of the arts to be elected a foreign member of Portugal’s national academy.

Professor Tom Earle, King John II Professor of Portuguese Studies at Oxford, has been made a corresponding fellow of the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa - Classe de Letras, the equivalent of the UK’s British Academy and Royal Society combined.

He has lectured at Oxford for more than 40 years specialising in Portuguese Renaissance literature. The period saw Portuguese adventurers discover Brazil, an eastern route to India and colonise parts of Africa. It was a time when Portuguese prose and poetry developed rapidly.‘

This accolade is a great honour,’ Professor Earle said. ‘As a foreigner I have been received into a body that recognises outstanding achievements by scholars of Portugal in the sciences and arts.’

For two years, Professor Earle was Oxford’s only student of Portuguese. He graduated with a First Class Honours degree in 1967 and within a year was appointed a lecturer, a job he combined with work for his doctorate.

Professor Earle is based in the university’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and has just completed his tenth book, on Portuguese literature held in university libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. The Renaissance in Portugal roughly spanned the 15th to 17th centuries and he is now researching a set of prose comedies from the period.

His favourite authors include Luís de Camões who is considered to be Portugal’s greatest poet. ‘He is thought of as the Shakespeare of Portugal and deservedly so.

’Relatively little is known of Portuguese literature and to help rectify that, Oxford will host a conference at St John’s College next year on the 16th century European theatre.‘Intellectually, study of the period is extremely rewarding.’ Professor Earle says. ‘Very little is known about Portuguese writing, even among the Portuguese themselves. They have had fewer opportunities for studying their own literature.

’Professor Earle attributes much of his success as a scholar to the support of an associated body, the Camões Institute in Lisbon, which funds language teaching in Oxford and in 2001 established the Instituto Camões Centre for Portuguese Language at the university.

‘One of the special things about Portugal is the amount of money it invests in teaching the language and promoting research by foreigners.

‘Recognition by the academy wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been in Oxford, which until now has provided excellent facilities and encouragement for research. I have been able to spend a very long time studying this esoteric subject. It has been a lifetime well spent.’

For more information contact Professor Earle at thomas.earle@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.

Notes for editors

  • The Academia das Ciências de Lisboa was formed in 1779 to advance science and learning in Portugal. It has two classes, for the sciences and letters. More information at http://www.acad-ciencias.pt/
  • Professor Earle is the 47th corresponding fellow in the class of letters. The two other Britons to be recognised are Professor Harold Livermore, a historian of Iberia, who died in February 2010, and Stephen Reckert, Emeritus Professor of Portuguese at the University of London.
  • The conference ‘European Theatre in the Sixteenth Century - the Latin and the Vernacular Traditions,’ runs from 1-2 October 2011 at St John’s College.