John W. Kronik, professor emeritus of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University, died Jan. 22 in Los Angeles. He was 74.

Kronik joined the Cornell faculty in 1966 from the University of Illinois, where he had been an assistant professor of Spanish since 1963. Previously he had been an assistant professor of Romance languages at Hamilton College (1958-1963). During his career he also was a visiting professor at Colby College, Columbia University, Syracuse University, Bryn Mawr College Centro de Estudios Hisp‡nicos (Madrid), Purdue University, Middlebury College, Brigham Young University, University of Colorado, University of California-Berkeley, UC-Irvine, UC-Riverside and UCLA.

Kronik, who specialized in Spanish literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, was born in Vienna, Austria, May 18, 1931. He completed his undergraduate studies at Queens College, N.Y., receiving a B.A. degree in Spanish in 1952. He received both his M.A. (1953) and Ph.D. (1960) in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

During his academic career he received numerous honors and awards, including two Fulbright Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was president of the International Gald—s Association from 1981 to 1985, and he was honored with a Distinguished Retiring Editor Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in 1992.

Kronik was a prolific and accomplished editor and served on the editorial boards of 31 distinguished journals, most notably as editor of the PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association, from 1986 to 1992. He was chair of the Fulbright national screening committee for Spain and Portugal from 1963 to 1964. Over the years, Kronik served as mentor and thesis adviser to a large number of Cornell graduate students, many of whom now hold academic positions at peer institutions.