Richard Bales:Richard Bales was an inspirational university teacher of French at Queen's University Belfast, and a researcher who enjoyed an international reputation in the field of Proust studies. A member of the prestigious Équipe Proust in Paris, at the École Normale Supérieure, working on a major project to publish diplomatic editions of Proust's workbooks, he bridged the research communities in his field in France, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Educated at Reigate Grammar School, Surrey, and the University of Exeter, where he graduated in French and German, his Master's thesis for the University of Kansas was on Reynaldo Hahn, the late 19th-century composer and contemporary of Proust. This led to a doctorate, at King's College, London, on medieval influences and resonances in the work of Proust.
There followed three landmark books in Proust studies: Proust and the Middle Ages(1975); Marcel Proust, "Bricquebec": Prototype d'À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs(1989); and Proust, "À la recherche du temps perdu"(1995), a gem of concentrated erudition. His knowledge of the field and its eminent specialists throughout the world was such that he was selected to edit The Cambridge Companion to Proust, the first in a series devoted to individual French authors by Cambridge University Press (2001). Sadly, the last Proust Cahier, on which he was working, will now appear posthumously.
He was a pioneer in word and image studies, publishing articles on Émile Mâle and Gustave Moreau. In the broader field of French literature, he was the author of Persuasion in the French Personal Novel(1996) and edited Challenges of Translations in French Literature: Studies and Poems in Honour of Peter Broome(2005). Highly esteemed in France, he was equally respected in Belgium for his work on Georges Rodenbach, Grégoire Le Roy, Maurice Maeterlinck and Belgian symbolism in general. A recent passion of his was the work of WG Sebald; in fact one of the last international conferences to which he contributed - in Australia - was on this subject. His detailed analysis of primary sources, coupled with his passionate advocacy of fin-de-siècle literature, painting and music, made of him one of the outstanding scholars of his generation.
He brought this enthusiasm to his teaching at Queen's University Belfast, where he was successively lecturer in French (1973-1990), reader in French (1990-1996) and professor of modern French literature (1996-2007).
He was head of French studies from 1996 to 1999 and was a member of the university's board of curators. For many years, he was the Queen's representative on the Royal Irish Academy National Committee for Modern Language Studies. He was elected president of ADEFFI, the Association of Third-Level Departments of French in Ireland, a position which illness prevented him from taking up in the latter part of 2006. He had little liking for the managerialism currently afflicting many universities and concentrated his energies on research and teaching, which he saw as being inextricably linked.
His research-related courses on Proust were memorable, as was his teaching of critical theory to all students of literature.
Wearing his great learning lightly, he shared his enthusiasm for France and French civilisation with generations of Queen's students in his courses on Algeria and on "Paris, ville d'art". He loved to share with others his enthusiasm for Romania and gastronomy, and was a most engaging dinner companion.
An Englishman, who made Belfast his home, he planned to take early retirement at the end of this year. However, he became terminally ill in Paris in the autumn and chose to be transferred back to Belfast, where he had the support of many loyal friends and colleagues. To one of these he confided, in his last few days: "I have only ever worked on things which I have loved." A fitting epitaph for a highly esteemed scholar and teacher.
Richard Bales: born June 21st, 1946; died December 17th, 2007.