"Cervantes's masterpiece, Don Quixote, undoubtedly occupies a privileged place in the development of Western fiction, being almost universally regarded as the first modern novel ever to be written," says literary scholar Ruth Fine. In her lecture, Fine will focus on the enthronement of DQ as the originator of modern fiction for the Iberian and Western world, as well as on the emergence of the notion of fiction for the Spanish Golden Age.

Ruth Fine was born in 1957 in Argentina. After earning a degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires with a major in comparative literature focusing on Spanish and Latin American literatures, as well as majors in Spanish and Latin American languages and literatures, she emigrated to Israel, where she earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She continued to work at the Hebrew University, where she is currently the director of the Institute for Western Cultures and the DAAD Center for German Studies. She is also the president of the Hispanists Society in Israel.

Ruth Fine's main areas of research include semiotics and literary theory, the literature of the Golden Age in Spain, the work of Cervantes, and contemporary Latin American literature and the work of Jorge Luis Borges.

The Dahlem Humanities Center Lectures (DHCL) aim to present distinguished humanists and social scientists, authors, intellectuals, artists, and other great minds from around the world to a wider academic and non-academic audience. The evening lectures are held during term time and illustrate the close cooperation between Freie Universität and non-university institutions such as embassies, foreign cultural institutes and publishers, as well as international partner universities.

Time and Location

• Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 6:15 p.m.
• Freie Universität Berlin, Seminar Center, Room L 115, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin; subway station: Dahlem-Dorf (U3)