Klaus W. Hempfer is Professor of Romance Literature and was First Vice-President of Freie Universität Berlin from 2003 to 2007. Since 1997 he has also been Director of the Center for Italian Studies. For his work on Italian literature he was awarded the Premio Internazionale Galileo Galilei. He has also received the title of Grande Ufficiale dell’ Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana and is a holder of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. His works include Gattungstheorie (1973), Poststrukturale Texttheorie und narrative Praxis (1976), Diskrepante Lektüren. Die Orlando-Furioso-Rezeption im Cinquecento (1987, Italian translation 2004), Testi e contesti (1998), Grundlagen der Textinterpretation (2002), and he has published about 100 articles on literary theory as well as French, English and Italian literature from the Middle Ages to post-modernism. Professor Hempfer is editor of the book series Text und Kontext. He is currently working mainly on European Renaissance literature and its ancient ‘heritage’, on French lyric poetry of the nineteenth century and on basic concepts of literary theory.