Henry Wells Sullivan (1942–2023)

Henry Wells Sullivan, eighty, passed away on Saturday, October 21, 2023, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Henry was born in Southgate in London on December 8, 1942. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French and Spanish from Oxford in 1966 and a master’s degree in French and Spanish also at Oxford in 1968. In 1970, he received his PhD from Harvard in Romance languages and literatures. He worked as an educator and professor for Lycée Michel Montaigne in Bordeaux, Harvard University, New York University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Ottawa, University of Florida, University of Missouri–Columbia, and finally at Tulane University.His academic journey spanned over fifty years. Since his first book appeared in 1976, a study on Juan del Encina, Henry W. Sullivan sealed his authority in the field with two major contributions: the theologically oriented Tirso de Molina & the Drama of the Counter Reformation (1976) and Calderón in the German Lands and the Low Countries: His Reception and Influence, 1654–1980 (1983), tracing the great dramatist’s stunning posthumous fortunes in a foreign land. Both books are indispensable readings for specialists of the Spanish Golden Age, the latter translated into German by Anke Albrecht and republished in 2017. Later in his career, Henry’s scholarship incorporated Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as a fruitful resource for literary criticism. From that period, he produced Grotesque Purgatory: A Study of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Part II (1996), a groundbreaking analysis of Don Quixote’s descent into the Cave of Montesinos as a metaphor for the talking cure. In the realm of pop culture and faithful to his admiration for the immortal group from Liverpool, he released The Beatles with Lacan: Rock ‘n’ Roll as Requiem for the Modern Age (1995), an immediate editorial success. A second edition of the book with a new Preface was published in 2013. Also published early in 2013, the Spanish translation became a best-seller in Argentina with two new sold-out impressions in August 2013 and February 2014.Henry was a Guggenheim Fellow (1985), Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (1978–1980), twice NEH Fellow (Junior 1976; Senior 1999), a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall College, Cambridge (1995–1996), and an alternate for the ACLS Senior Fellowship (2003). His work capacity and productivity were admirable. In 2002, he published The Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: A Metrical, Linear Translation, a collection that attests to his exceptional talent as a literary translator and poet. In 2018 came Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain. Seven Essays on the Definition of a Genre, “a splendid study in seven interwoven essays that cover a lot of ground in great depth” in the words of Jane W. Albrecht: arguably an epoch-making publication that brought new light to the study of Spanish tragedy.At the time of his death, Henry was working on an ambitious project: Tirso de Molina (Fray Gabriel Téllez), 1579–1648: A Life, co-authored with Jane W. Albrecht. He also had in mind a micro-history of cultural relations between Spain and the Kingdom of Bohemia from the Late Middle Ages to the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the death of Charles II.The international community of Hispanists mourns his death with a deep feeling of void and sadness for his passing. Henry will remain a highly admired and respected colleague, and an exceptional mentor. His prolific body of work—as a Lacanian scholar, literary critic, translator, poet, novelist, playwright, and composer—will continue to enlighten us and serve as timeless proof of his fervent dedication to the study of Spanish early-modern literature and theater.

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