Jaume Medina i Casanovas (Vic, 1949 - Barcelona, 2023), a poet, philologist, and Latinist, obtained a PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Barcelona with a doctoral thesis titled Història de les adaptacions de metres clàssics greco-llatins en la poesia catalana (segle XX), which was awarded the 1997 Josep Carner Prize of the Institute of Catalan Studies. In 2009, he was appointed Chair of the Department of Classical Philology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he taught until his retirement.

A poet of the 1970s Generation of Catalan writers, he made his debut with the books Temps de tempesta (1974), Encalçar el vent (1976), and Dura llavor secreta (1990) and also wrote verses of a variety of themes, including religious and traditional matters. He translated works from Spanish, English, German and, in particular, Latin, with translations of Ovid, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Saint Augustine, Virgil, and Catullus. He also wrote L’art de la paraula (2000), the first treatise on rhetoric and poetics to be published in Catalan, as well as an autobiographical fiction novel and numerous studies on Carles Riba.

Throughout his highly active professional career, he received several awards, among them, the Prize for the Best Translation of 1982 (in 1983), the Fifth Catalan Cultural Congress Foundation Prize for Biography and Historical Studies (1988), and the Serra d’Or Critics Prize for Research (1990), the Jaume Bofill i Ferro Prize for Literary Criticism (1999), and the City of Palma Camilo José Cela prize for Literary Criticism (2010).

He was a member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Marta Barberan for AELC.
Documentation: Author’s personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Cover photograph: Adrià Costa.