Robert F. Lima

Robert Lima, poet, critic, bibliographer, playwright and translator, is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literatures at The Pennsylvania State University, as well as Fellow Emeritus of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies.  He is an Academician of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española and a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Española.  He has been honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by Villanova University, inducted into the Enxebre Orden da Vieira in Spain and named Knight Commander in the Order of Queen Isabel of Spain by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I. 

Among his 24 books are The Theatre of García Lorca (Las Américas, 1963), Ramón del Valle-Inclán (Columbia UP, 1972), An Annotated Bibliography of Valle-Inclán (Penn State U. Libraries, 1972), Dos ensayos sobre teatro español de los veinte (U. de Murcia, 1984), andValle-Inclán. The Theatre of His Life (Missouri UP, 1988).  He has translated Valle-Inclán’s aesthetico-mystical treatise The Lamp of Marvels (Lindisfarne Press, 1986) and his selection of short dramas Savage Acts: Four Plays (Estreno, 1993). His most recent books areDark Prisms. Occultism in Hispanic Drama (UP of Kentucky) and Valle-Inclán. El teatro de su vida (Editorial Nigra, Spain), both published in 1995, Ramón del Valle-Inclán: An Annotated Bibliography (Grant & Cutler, 1999) and The Dramatic World of Valle-Inclán (Boydell & Brewer, 2003).  His newest title is Stages of Evil. Occultism in Western Theatre and Drama (UP of Kentucky), published in December 2005.

He selected for publication, edited, and translated Barrenechea’s Borges the Labyrinth Maker (NYU Press, 1965), the first critical study on Borges in English, as well as edited and contributed to Borges and the Esoteric, a special issue of Crítica Hispánica (Duquesne UP, 1993).  He has published well over one hundred articles in a variety of fields. 

In 1974 he created “Surrealism–A Celebration,” a multi-faceted event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Surrealist Movement.  Included were theatre productions, music concerts, films, displays of rare publications, paintings, sculpture, jewelry and other objects, presentations by leading art historians, artists, and literary critics.  And a Surrealist banquet.  Elements of these events appeared in a special 1975 issue of Journal of General Education, which he edited.

Over four hundred of his poems have appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad in periodicals, anthologies, and in his poetry collectionsFathoms (1981), The Olde Ground (1985), Mayaland (1992), Sardinia / Sardegna (2000), Tracking the Minotaur (2003), as well as his chapbooks Poems of Exile and Alienation (with Teresinka Pereira, 1976) and Corporal Works (1985). He has been elected to membership in PEN International and the Poetry Society of America.  From March through August 2004, Penn State University Libraries exhibited “The Poetic World of Robert Lima,” a retrospective of his poetry career from 1955 to the present.
His biography appears in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the East, Who’s Who in American Education, and creative writing directories in the U.S. and abroad.

Dr. Robert Lima, OIC
Knight Commander, Order of Queen Isabel of Spain
Academician, North American Academy of the Spanish Language
Corresponding Member, Royal Spanish Academy
Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Comparative Literatures
Fellow Emeritus, Institute for the Arts and Humanities
Penn State University