ABSTRACT
As some here will already know, it is not by chance that the theme of the Taylorian Special Lecture for 1983 is a Portuguese one. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Portuguese Studies at Oxford. The moving spirit in bringing that about was my distinguished predecessor in the chair of Spanish, William James Entwistle, himself also a scholar of things Portuguese. I see from the files that Entwistle mounted his campaign on behalf of Portuguese with considerable skill. For instance, he made telling use of the visit to Oxford of the then Prince of Wales to open the new Taylorian building. On that occasion the prince, one supposes not without a certain amount of prompting, publicly expressed his view that the endowment of Portuguese Studies here was an urgent need. He also requested that he should be kept informed by the ViceChancellor of progress in the matter. Not surprisingly, the proposal to set up a Portuguese lecturership here then speedily received the approval of the university bodies whose approval was necessary. However, none of that would have happened had not the Portuguese government of the day generously undertaken to fund the lecturership, and to contribute to the library needs of the subject. The Portuguese bore all, or nearly all, of these costs for a good many years. They continue to make a generous annual contribution. They also help the University to select a young Portuguese scholar of promise to come here for a term of years to assist our own lecturer, Dr Earle, who was appointed in 1968 by the University to give additional stability to the subject. We welcome very warmly here today Professor Fernando de Mello Moser who, in addition to being a distinguished student and teacher of English literature, is also President of the Instituto de
Lingua e Cultura Portuguesa which looks after Portuguese cultural relations with foreign universities. I am sure I can still speak for the University, though only now from a back seat, when I say that we are glad to take the opportunity of this quinquagenarian occasion to express our appreciation for the support that Oxford has received from successive Portuguese governments during the last fifty years. Mention also ought to be made of the grants that the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon has made, since it was set up, for the purpose of funding the visits to Portugal of senior members of the University engaged on research, and for various other purposes.
