Marie Borroff

Marie Edith Borroff (born September 10, 1923) is an American poet, translator, and the Sterling Professor of English emerita at Yale University.^[1]

Life

Borroff was born in New York City in 1923. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA and MA in 1946,^[2] and from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1956. In 1959, she became the first woman to teach in the English Department at Yale, and in 1965 was the first woman appointed to be a professor of English. She retired in 1994.^[3]

She was one of the first two women to be granted tenure in any department in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and in 1991 she became the first woman on the faculty ever to be named a Sterling Professor, the highest honor bestowed on Yale faculty.

An Endowed Chair at Yale has been named for her.^[4]

Works

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study. Yale University Press. 1963.
• Marie Borroff, ed. (1963). Wallace Stevens; a collection of critical essays. Prentice-Hall.
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: a new verse translation. Translator Marie Borroff. Norton. 1967.
• Pearl: a new verse translation. Translator Marie Borroff. W. W. Norton. 1977. ISBN 978-0-393-09144-1.
• Language and the Poet. University of Chicago Press. 1979. ISBN 978-0-226-06651-6.
• Marie Borroff, Mary Teresa Tavormina, Robert F. Yeager, eds. (1995). The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff. D.S. Brewer. ISBN 978-0-85991-480-2.
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Patience ; and Pearl: verse translations. Translator Marie Borroff. W.W. Norton. 2001. ISBN 978-0-393-97658-8.
• Stars and Other Signs. Yale University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-300-09570-8.
• Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Beyond. Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-300-09612-5.
• Albert Gelpi, ed. (1993). "From "Recent Poetry"". Denise Levertov: selected criticism. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06416-8.

Reviews

After reading Stars and Other Signs all spring, I have rediscovered my old appreciation for lyric poetry. Marie Borroff, the purest American poet since Wallace Stevens, assumes the master's high lyric calling. It is an influence beset with danger. Thankfully, Borroff takes Stevens in a different direction from poets like John Ashbery. She has not been seduced by "poetry." She returns us to a world we did not make.^[5]

References

1. "Department News | English". yale.edu. Retrieved 2014-09-20.
2. "Class News", The University of Chicago Magazine
3. Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. "Yale Alumni Magazine: emeritus professors (May 2003)". web.archive.org. Retrieved 2014-09-20.
4. "Yale Office of Public Affairs & Communications". opa.yale.edu. Retrieved 2014-09-20.
5. "Marie Borroff. Stars and Other Signs. (Book Review)", World Literature Today, October 01, 2003, Lee Oser

External links

• "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lines 1-19)", Norton Anthology of English Literature
• Guest lecture on Wallace Stevens focusing on the poem The Auroras of Autumn (part of Open Yale Courses).
• BorroffReadingGawain.com