Anne Middleton

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Dr.

Anne L. Middleton
Born(1940-06-18)June 18, 1940
DiedNovember 23, 2016(2016-11-23) (aged 76)
Nationality American
Occupation Professor
Spouse(s)Gene Rochlin
Academic background
Alma mater Harvard University
Doctoral advisor Morton W. Bloomfield
Academic work
Institutions Detroit Public Schools; University of Michigan; University of California, Berkeley
InfluencedSteven Justice (Berkeley)

Anne Middleton (July 18, 1940 – November 23, 2016) [1] was an American medievalist, and the Florence Green Bixby Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. [2]

Middleton specialized in the study of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. [2] In 1966, she completed her PhD at Harvard University under the supervision of Morton W. Bloomfield, writing a dissertation on the prose style of Ælfric’s lives of St. Martin. A firm "believ[er] in public universities as public goods", known for "cheerful contempt of the private schools and their ways", she spent the bulk of her career in public education, working first in the Detroit school system, then the University of Michigan, and finally at Berkeley, where she taught until her retirement. [1]

Middleton was known as "a titanic figure in Middle English literary studies". [1] Her work on Chaucer, especially "The Clerk's Tale", is praised by scholars for its contribution to the understanding of Chaucer [3] and Chaucer's audience. Some of her essays are collected in a 2013 collection edited by Steven Justice and published by Ashgate, Chaucer, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Literary History; in the same year, Ohio State University Press published an edited collection, Answerable Style, whose contributions take Middleton's work as a "touchstone". Many of the contributions to the volume had been presented at a conference held, in Middleton's honour, at Berkeley in April 2008. [2]

In addition to a UC President's Fellowship, Middleton held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (both for group and for individual research), and was awarded the Berkeley Citation upon her retirement in 2006. [4] She died in her sleep in November 2016, "one month after receiving a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia". [1]

Selected publications

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Justice, Steven (February 12, 2017). "In Memoriam: Anne L. Middleton (18 July 1940–23 November 2016)". New Chaucer Society . Retrieved August 20, 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 Galloway, Andrew (2013). "The Medieval Literary". In Frank Grady; Andrew Galloway (eds.). Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Ohio State UP. pp. 1–12. ISBN   9780814212073.
  3. Morse, Charlotte C. (1990). "Critical Approaches to the Clerk's Tale". In Carl David Benson; Elizabeth Ann Robertson (eds.). Chaucer's Religious Tales. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 71–84. ISBN   9780859913027 . Retrieved July 25, 2013.
  4. "Anne Middleton". UC Berkeley Department of English. Retrieved August 20, 2017.