Terence O'Reilly


Terence O'Reilly MRIA was a professor of Spanish at University College Cork who undertook research on the literature, history and art of the Spanish Golden Age.

Career

Terence O'Reilly received his B.A. Honours degree in Spanish and French in 1969 from the University of Nottingham, followed by a PhD for a thesis on the literature of meditation in early sixteenth century Castile and Aragon in 1972. In 1973, he was granted a research fellowship in the University of St Andrews, where he worked in the Spanish department. In 1975 he moved to University College Cork to take up a college lectureship in Spanish.
According to his UCC research profile, his principal fields of research included the literature, history and art of Spain during the Golden Age, the prose of the period, religious writings, and the paintings of El Greco and Diego Velázquez.‍

Personal life

O'Reilly was born in London to Irish parents and lived for a period in India. In 1968, he married the historian Jennifer O'Reilly (née Williams). He died in 2023, having been diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2017.

Honours

Selected publications

From Ignatius Loyola to John of the Cross: Spirituality and Literature in Sixteenth-Century Spain The Bible in the Literary Imagination of the Spanish Golden Age: Images and Texts from Columbus to Velázquez The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Contexts, Sources, Reception Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain: John of the Cross, Francisco de Aldana, Luis de León, ed. Stephen Boyd