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1902
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1964
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1965
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1977
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1332526861/?tag=2022091-20
Ramon was born on March 13, 1869, in A Coruña, Spain. His father, Juan Menéndez Fernández, was a lawyer and a magistrate, originally from Asturias. His mother was Ramona Pidal, also an Asturian. His older brother, Juan Menéndez Pidal, whom he outlived by more than fifty years, was also a literary scholar of folk poetry, expert in the poesía popular of Asturias. Another older brother, Luis Menéndez Pidal was a notable realist painter.
Ramon studied at the University of Madrid.
In 1899 Ramon obtained the chair in Romance studies in the Universities of Madrid , an appointment that he held until his retirement in 1939. Menéndez Pidal was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy (Real Academia Española) in 1901, and in 1925 its director. However, he resigned this position in 1939 under pressure from the academics who wanted a Director more acceptable to the Franco regime. However, he was re-elected Director unanimously in December, 1947, and held that post for the rest of his life.
In 1910, Ramon became the head of the philology section at the Centro de Estudios Históricos, a division of the liberal and Europeanising Junta para Ampliación de Estudios, which also had sections devoted to medicine, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In 1914 the Centro founded the Revista de Filología Española, which would become the premier scholarly journal in the fields of linguistics, Medieval and Renaissance Spanish literature.
Ramon was nominated for a Nobel Prize 151 times, the most nominated person, three times more than the second most nominated person, André Malraux.
A ballad collection, designed for the general public, Flor nueva de romances viejos became a best seller, and includes some versions of ballads that Don Ramón had authored himself.
Quotes from others about the person
...the most profound and well informed scholar of the Spanish epic tradition.
In 1900, Ramon married María Goyri, who in 1896 became the first Spanish woman to receive a degree in Philosophy and later, in 1909, became the first woman to attain a non-medical doctorate at a Spanish university. They spent their honeymoon retracing the geographic locales of the Poem of the Cid (Cantar de Mio Cid). They gave birth to two children: Jimena and Rodrigo.
