Alvin A. Lee | |
---|---|
4th President and Vice-Chancellor of McMaster University | |
In office 1980–1990 | |
Preceded by | Arthur Bourns |
Succeeded by | Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace |
Personal details | |
Born | Woodville,Ontario,Canada | September 30,1930
Occupation | Academic administration |
Profession | literary critic |
Alvin A. Lee (born September 30,1930),is a Canadian literary critic and former academic administrator.
The majority of his academic career—some 39 years—was spent at McMaster University in Hamilton;he served as President and vice-chancellor of that university from 1980 to 1990. He also served as Chairman of the Council of Ontario Universities. The McMaster Museum of Art is housed in a building named in his honour because of his work acquiring extensive and valuable art collections for McMaster University. [1] He received honorary doctorates from Victoria University in the University of Toronto,and from McMaster University,and was made an honorary professor at Beijing University,the University of Science and Technology Beijing,and Heilongjiang University. [2] Lee holds B.A.,M.A.,M.Div.,and Ph.D. degrees.
His academic interests lie in the fields of Old English literature,the Bible and literature,and literary theory.
Lee served as the General Editor of the 30-volume Collected Works of Northrop Frye,being published by the University of Toronto Press (the final volume published in 2012);he has edited two volumes himself,including an annotated edition of Frye's The Great Code. He also wrote the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics editions of The Great Code and Words with Power. He is perhaps best known for his work on Beowulf:Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon:Beowulf as Metaphor (University of Toronto Press). He has written articles,reviews and another book on Old English poetry,The Guest Hall of Eden:Four Essays on the Design of Old English Poetry (Yale University Press),and one on the Canadian poet and playwright,James Reaney. He,along with his wife,Hope Lee,also edited several textbooks for Harcourt Brace:Wish and Nightmare,Circle of Stories:One,Circle of Stories:Two,The Temple and the Ruin,The Garden and the Wilderness,and The Peaceable Kingdom.
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars;the only certain dating is for the manuscript,which was produced between 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf,a hero of the Geats,comes to the aid of Hrothgar,the king of the Danes,whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him,Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious,Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later,Beowulf defeats a dragon,but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death,his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.
Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet,fiction writer,essayist,novelist,editor,and filmmaker.
William Bliss Carman was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States,where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada's poet laureate during his later years.
Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist,considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
George Elliott Clarke,is a Canadian poet,playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions,its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets,Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".
Edwin John Dove Pratt,who published as E. J. Pratt,was "the leading Canadian poet of his time." He was a Canadian poet from Newfoundland who lived most of his life in Toronto,Ontario. A three-time winner of the country's Governor General's Award for poetry,he has been called "the foremost Canadian poet of the first half of the century."
Sir John Frank Kermode,FBA was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending:Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.
Louis Dudek,was a Canadian poet,academic,and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry,and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books. In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic,teacher and theoretician,Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities".
Arthur James Marshall Smith was a Canadian poet and anthologist. He "was a prominent member of a group of Montreal poets" –the Montreal Group,which included Leon Edel,Leo Kennedy,A. M. Klein,and F. R. Scott —"who distinguished themselves by their modernism in a culture still rigidly rooted in Victorianism."
James Crerar Reaney,was a Canadian poet,playwright,librettist,and professor,"whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol." Reaney won Canada's highest literary award,the Governor General's Award,three times and received the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama for both his poetry and his drama.
Seymour Mayne is a Canadian author,editor,or translator of more than seventy books and monographs. As he has written about the Jewish Canadian poets,his work is recognizable by its emphasis on the human dimension,the translation of the experience of the immigrant and the outsider,the finding of joy in the face of adversity,and the linking with tradition and a strong concern with history in its widest sense.
John Robert Colombo,CM is a Canadian author,editor,and poet. He has published over 200 titles,including major anthologies and reference works.
Eli Mandel was a Canadian poet,editor of many Canadian anthologies,and literary academic.
"A Defence of Poetry" is an essay by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,written in 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840 in Essays,Letters from Abroad,Translations and Fragments by Edward Moxon in London. It contains Shelley's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".
Robert Lecker is a Canadian scholar,author,and Greenshields Professor of English at McGill University,where he specializes in Canadian literature. He received the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching at McGill University in 1996. Lecker is a leading authority on Canadian literature. In 2012,Lecker was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his influential studies on literary value in English Canada and Canadian cultural identity. In addition to his teaching and academic writing,Lecker has held a number of prominent positions in the Canadian publishing industry throughout his career. He founded ECW Press in 1997,he co-edited the Canadian literary journal Essays on Canadian Writing between 1975 and 2004,he has edited several anthologies of Canadian and international literature,and he currently heads a literary agency in Montreal,the Robert Lecker Agency.
The Collected Works of Northrop Frye is a uniform scholarly edition of the writings of the 20th-century literary critic Northrop Frye. The series was published by the University of Toronto Press under the general editorship of Alvin A. Lee,with the first of its thirty volumes appearing in 1996 and the last appearing in 2012. Alongside Frye's established critical writings,interviews,and speeches,the Collected Works presents previously unpublished material,such as diaries,book drafts,and juvenilia,drawn from his archives at Victoria University,Toronto. The project was funded by various grants from the Michael G. DeGroote family through McMaster University,from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,and from Victoria University,Toronto.
Edward Killoran Brown,who wrote as E. K. Brown,was a Canadian professor and literary critic. He "influenced Canadian literature primarily through his award-winning book On Canadian Poetry (1943)," which "established the standards of excellence and many of the subsequent directions of Canadian criticism." Northrop Frye called him "the first critic to bring Canadian literature into its proper context".
Oscar Pelham Edgar was a Canadian teacher. He was a full professor and head of the Department of English at the Victoria College,Toronto from 1910 to 1938. He wrote many articles and several monographs on English literature. He had a talent for identifying and encouraging promising new authors. He was an active member of various literary societies,and was the force behind the establishment of the Canadian Writers’Foundation to help needy authors.
Colin Robert Chase was an American academic. An associate professor of English at the University of Toronto,he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. His best-known work,The Dating of Beowulf,challenged the accepted orthodoxy of the dating of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf—then thought to be from the latter half of the eighth century—and left behind what was described in A Beowulf Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude".
John Daniel Robins was a Canadian academic and humorist. A longtime professor of German and English literature at the University of Toronto's Victoria University,he was most noted for his book The Incomplete Anglers,which was co-winner with E. K. Brown's On Canadian Poetry of the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 1943 Governor General's Awards.