Fred Norris Robinson

Fred Norris Robinson in 1904

Fred Norris Robinson (April 4, 1871 – July 21, 1966) was an eminent American Chaucer scholar and Celticist.

Biography

Norris received his B.A. (1891), M.A. (1892), and PhD (1894) from Harvard University, working with the eminent medievalists Francis James Child and George Lyman Kittredge. In 1936, after appointments at Harvard as instructor (1894), assistant professor (1902), and professor (1906), he succeeded his thesis adviser, Kittredge, as Gurney Professor of English. In 1895, he spent a year abroad at the University of Freiburg, Germany, working with Rudolph Turneysen, one of the founders of Celtic Philology.

Scholarly achievements

Norris' main scholarly achievement was the publication, after 29 years of preparatory work, of the most influential edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1933; second edition 1957 published under slightly different titles). The 1987 Riverside Chaucer, while revised and re-edited by several colleagues, is greatly indebted to his work. These three editions have facilitated more students' first contact with the medieval author than any others. Moreover, his work as editor contributed to the move of Chaucer studies from Europe to North America.

The other major success in Norris' career is that he became the founding father of Celtic Studies in the United States. "He taught the first course in Gaelic in the US, and because of his collection building with Irish language and literature, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Breton, and Manx books, Harvard's Widener Library has the finest collection of works in the field of Celtic Studies in the world."[1]

Select publications

Literature

References

  1. Anita Obermeier, "Robinson, Fred Norris," Handbook of Medieval Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 2594-99 (here 2594).

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Fred Norris Robinson
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, March 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.