Ted Riley, who died on March 6th, was a scholar of international stature - he was the doyen of Cervantes studies, and one of the leading lights in an outstanding generation of British Hispanists. For many years no international meeting on Cervantes could be counted fully a success without his presence, for he lent such gatherings a particular authority thanks to the universal admiration he had won through his studies of that great master of world literature. He was invited to speak at conferences and universities across the globe.
Scholarship for Ted Riley was never a dry, esoteric pursuit. On the contrary, it was a source of human understanding and, indeed, of friendship. He liked to remark on the symmetry of his university career. A graduate of Queen's College, Oxford, where he studied under Sir Peter Russell (who became a lifelong friend), he spent just over 20 years at Trinity College Dublin, successively as lecturer, Reader, Fellow and then Professor of Spanish.
It was at TCD that he met his wife Judy, when she was a lecturer in the Department of Spanish. In 1970, he came to the Chair of Hispanic Studies at Edinburgh University, which he was to hold for just under 20 years until his retirement in 1989.
He made his academic reputation with his book Cervantes's Theory of the Novel, which was first published in 1962. Written with impeccable erudition, and in that marvellous, elegant prose-style which made reading all of Ted's writings such a pleasure, it studied the impact of Renaissance literary theory on Cervantes's works, but focused especially on the ways in which Cervantes transformed that influence into something wholly his own, laying the basis thereby for the development of the modern novel. This book was to become a landmark in Cervantes studies.
I count myself very fortunate to have been Ted's friend, but my experience was, of course, not unique. Ted had formed a great collection of friends - in Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh, the USA and Spain. On the occasion of his retirement in 1989, he was presented with a volume of critical essays written by former students and colleagues at Edinburgh, Dublin and elsewhere. This was a token of the high esteem in which he was held as a scholar and academic, but also, of course, evidence of the affection he had elicited from so many different people throughout his career.
The volume was conceived and edited by two of his friends in the Edinburgh department, Jenny Lowe and Philip Swanson, and contained contributions from his dear friend, the late Paco Sarriβ, and from several of his former Edinburgh students and colleagues. Also among the contributors were friends he had made in Dublin - Eamonn Rodgers, James Whiston, Dan Rogers and Anthony Close.
In The Colloquy of the Dogs, which Ted, in one of his best essays, called Cervantes's most exemplary novel, a weird story about talking dogs is framed by a dialogue between two men who had long ago been friends but had lost touch with each other.
One of the men offers the other a manuscript of the adventures of two talking dogs. Sceptical at first, the other man proceeds to read this unbelievable story, but when he comes to the end, his rational misgivings about its credibility have vanished; they have become irrelevant because what matters above all is his enjoyment of the story and his appreciation of the skill which went into its making.
But more important still than the reader's approval of the story is the fact that the process of reading has led to a renewal of the two men's friendship after a long absence. The once sceptical reader invites its possible author to take a walk with him: "Let's go to the park to refresh the eyes of the body, since I have already refreshed the eyes of my understanding.
"Yes, let's do that," said the other.
And so, off they went.
Ted loved this passage. He admired its laconic sufficiency. There was no more that needed to be said. The talking dogs are enough to convey Cervantes's belief that, in the final analysis, the power of fiction lies in its capacity to establish a bond between the author and the reader, between the maker of a work of art and the person who appreciates the value of what has been made. And that bond, Cervantes intimates to us, is precisely akin to the bond of trust and affection that brings people together in the experience of friendship.
Ted Riley established a rare friendship with Cervantes. He was a devoted reader and also a faithful friend. There will be many of us whose lives have been enormously enriched by his reading and writing on Cervantes. And now we too will read Cervantes in a new way, for it will not be possible for us to pick up Don Quixote without being reminded of Ted Riley. Reading Cervantes will become a way of renewing and replenishing an enduring friendship with Ted.
E.W.