Dennis Howard Green | |
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Born | Bournemouth, England | 26 June 1922
Died | 5 December 2008 86) Cambridge, England | (aged
Spouses | Dorothy Warren (m. 1947;div. 1972)Margaret Parry (m. 1972;died 1997)Sarah Redpath (m. 2001) |
Children | 1 |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Konrads Trojanerkrieg und Gottfrieds Tristan. Vorstudien zum Gotischen Stil in der Dichtung |
Doctoral advisor | Friedrich Ranke |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Germanic philology |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions |
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Notable students | |
Main interests | |
Notable works |
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Dennis Howard Green FBA (26 June 1922 – 5 December 2008) was an English philologist who was Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. He specialized in Germanic philology,particularly the study of Medieval German literature,Germanic languages and Germanic antiquity. Green was considered one of the world's leading authorities in these subjects,on which he was the author of numerous influential works.
Dennis Howard Green was born in Bournemouth,England,on 26 June 1922,the son of Herbert Maurice Green and Agnes Edith Flemming. [1] [2] Just before World War II,at the age of eighteen,Green enrolled at Trinity College,Cambridge to study German. [3]
During the war,Green temporarily abandoned his studies to serve in the Royal Tank Regiment,where he rose to the rank of major and participated in the Normandy landings. During this time it is probable that he was a member of British intelligence. During the war,Green was once arrested for having spoken Dutch with a German accent,and in May 1945,he organised a military transport to Halle to enable him to acquire a complete set of Niemeyer medieval texts in exchange for rations. The discipline and order which Green became accustomed to in the military would become key characteristics of his future career. [4]
Returning to his studies at Cambridge after the war,Green gained his B.A. at Cambridge in 1946. [1] He developed a strong scholarly interest in Germanic philology and Medieval German literature. [5] Unable to conduct his future studies in war-ravaged Germany as he preferred,Green opted for the University of Basel,where he gained his Ph.D. in 1949 under the supervision of Friedrich Ranke. [1] [6] Ranke,who had been dismissed and exiled by the Nazis,was a known authority on Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan. Green's Ph.D. thesis was a comparative study of the style of Konrad von Würzburg's Der trojanische Krieg and Gottfried's Tristan. [7] Along with Frederick Pickering,Green became one of a selected group of elite British Germanists with qualifications from leading German-language universities. [6]
Green was Lecturer in German at the University of St Andrews from 1949 to 1950. He was elected to a Research Fellowship at Trinity College,Cambridge,in 1949,which he continued to hold for the rest of his life. [8] Green gained an M.A. at Cambridge in 1950,and was University Lecturer in German at Cambridge from 1950 to 1966. [1] [6]
A polyglot,Green spoke not only English and German,but also Portuguese,Romanian,Chinese and other languages,and was thoroughly acquainted with medieval languages and literatures,both Germanic and Romance. This enabled him to draw upon a wealth of sources for his works. From 1956 to 1979 Green was Chair of the Department of Other Languages at Cambridge. Apart from German,it covered a wide variety of languages,including Dutch,Portuguese,Hungarian and Greek. [9]
Green's The Carolingian Lord (1965) was a semantic study of forms of address for sovereign authority in Old High German. [10] It drew upon a wide array of sources,including Old Saxon,Old English,Gothic,Old Norse and Latin. [7] It established him as an international authority on medieval German studies. Aided by the widespread acclaim which The Carolingian Lord received,Green was from 1966 to 1979 Chair of Modern Languages at Cambridge. [10]
In 1979 Green was elected Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge,succeeding Leonard Wilson Forster. He ran his Department of German with a firm hand,but was known as a brilliant teacher for those who were able to keep up with his pace. [10] Among his more notable students was David Yeandle. [5]
Combined with his duties at Cambridge,Green was a productive writer. In 1975,he published all of the twenty book reviews for the Modern Language Review ,which subsequently gave rise to Lex Green,whereby the editors of this journal were limited to permitting the publication of three reviews per person a year. [11]
In his Approaches to Wolfram von Eschenbach (1978),which he wrote with his colleague Leslie Peter Johnson,and The art of recognition in Wolfram's Parzival (1982),Green made a significant contribution to the study of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival . [10] [11] Parzival was one of Green's favourite works,and he made a point of reading it once a year. [12] His Irony in the Medieval Romance (1979) examined a vast amount of textual and literary sources of medieval romance from a comparative perspective,and is considered a pioneering work. [10]
Green was one of few medieval Germanists who were thoroughly acquainted with both Medieval German and Medieval French literature,and eagerly studied the two from a comparative perspective. He notably analyzed Medieval German literature within the whole range of the Germanic languages,and in the context of the Christianization of the Germanic peoples. [13] Unlike many other Germanists,Green consistently wrote his monographs on Medieval German literature in English,which made them available to a broader audience. [12]
Green retired from Cambridge in 1989,and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy the same year. [8] He was succeeded by Roger Paulin. Green was along with Arthur Thomas Hatto the only medieval Germanist who was a Fellow of the Academy,and became an influential figure there. [14] His retirement ushered in a wave of scholarly productivity. His Medieval Listening and Reading (1994) examined orality and literacy in Medieval Europe. [10]
In 1998,Green returned to his scholarly roots by publishing Language and history in the early Germanic world . It examines major aspects of the culture of the early Germanic peoples,including the subjects of religion,law,kinship,warfare and kingship. Drawing upon the evidence from no less than twelve Germanic languages,it also examines contacts early Germanic peoples had with their non-Germanic neighbours,and their contacts with Christianity. [13] Intended for both a scholarly and general readership,it gained a wide audience. [10]
Green was a member of several learned societies,including Modern Humanities Research Association and the International Association for Germanic Studies (IVG),of which he at one point served as Vice-President. [10] He was a founding member of an interdisciplinary group of scholars which met annually in San Marino to discuss the Germanic peoples and languages,and he edited a collection of essays by this group published in 2003. [5]
Green continued writing books and book reviews well into his 80s. His monographs from this time,such as The Beginnings of Medieval Romance:fact and fiction 1150–1220 (2002) and Women Readers in the Middle Ages (2007),covered topics recently made relevant by critical theory,such as reading,listening,orality,literacy and the role of women. [10] [15]
Green died on 5 December 2008. His final monograph,Women and marriage in German medieval romance (2009),which he had completed a few weeks before his death,was published posthumously by Cambridge University Press. At the time of his death,Green was working on a draft for a book on authorship in medieval literature. [10]
For more than half a century,Green was one of the most distinguished scholars of Cambridge,and he has been described as one of the last representatives of the so-called Cambridge tradition,dating back to the nineteenth century,in which the study of literature proceeded from philology and scholars of literature were thoroughly trained in historical linguistics. [9] [16] Following the death of Green,there remained few,if any,scholars in the United Kingdom with the broad competence in Germanic linguistics and philology which he had. [13] He was largely responsible for making Cambridge the pre-eminent British institution on the study of Medieval German literature. [14]
After his death the D. H. Green Fund was established at the University of Cambridge "for the encouragement of medieval German studies". [17]
Green married Dorothy Warren in 1947. They had one daughter,and divorced in 1972. On 17 November 1972 he married Margaret Parry,who died in 1997. In 2001 Green married Sarah Redpath. [8] A man of great wanderlust,Green made many exotic journeys during his life,including travelling the Silk Road and Machu Picchu. [6]
Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
The Fisher King is a figure in Arthurian legend, the last in a long line of British kings tasked with guarding the Holy Grail. The Fisher King is both the protector and physical embodiment of his lands, but a wound renders him infertile and his kingdom barren. Unable to walk or ride a horse, he is sometimes depicted as spending his time fishing while he awaits a "chosen one" who can heal him. Versions of the story vary widely, but the Fisher King is typically depicted as being wounded in the groin, legs, or thigh. The healing of these wounds always depends upon the completion of a hero-knight's task.
Parzival is a medieval romance by the knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, centers on the Arthurian hero Parzival and his long quest for the Holy Grail following his initial failure to achieve it.
Lohengrin is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources. Wolfram's story was expanded in two later romances. Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin of 1848 is based upon the legend.
Feirefiz is a character in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Arthurian poem Parzival. He is the half-brother of Parzival, the story's hero. He is the child of their father Gahmuret's first marriage to the Moorish queen Belacane, and equals his brother in knightly ability. Because his father was white and his mother black, Feirefiz's skin consists of black and white patches. His appearance is compared to that of a magpie or a parchment with writing on it, though he is considered very handsome.
Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst Höfler was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. A student of Rudolf Much, Höfler was Professor and Chair of German Language and Old German Literature at the University of Vienna. Höfler was also a Nazi from 1922 and a member of the SS Ahnenerbe before the Second World War. Höfler was a close friend of Georges Dumézil and Stig Wikander, with whom he worked closely on developing studies on Indo-European society. He tutored a significant number of future prominent scholars at Vienna, and was the author of works on early Germanic culture. Julia Zernack refers to him as "perhaps most famous and probably most controversial representative" of the "Vienna School" of Germanic studies founded by Much.
Brian Oliver Murdoch is a British philologist who is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Stirling. He specializes in the study of early Germanic and Celtic literature, on which he has authored and edited several influential works.
Eugen Kölbing (1846-1899) was a German philologist, a specialist in the study of Nordic, English, and French language and literature and comparative linguistics and literature.
Moriaen is a 13th-century Arthurian romance in Middle Dutch. A 4,720-line version is preserved in the vast Lancelot Compilation, and a short fragment exists at the Royal Library at Brussels. The work tells the story of Morien, the Moorish son of Aglovale, one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.
Willehalm is an unfinished Middle High German poem from the early 13th century, written by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In terms of genre, the poem is "a unique fusion of the courtly and the heroic, with elements of the saintly legend attaching to it."
Ernst Eduard Martin was a German philologist of Romance and Germanic studies. He was the son of gynecologist Eduard Arnold Martin (1809–1875).
Richard Heinzel was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Cyril William Edwards was a British medievalist and translator. Teaching in London and Oxford, he published extensively on the medieval German lyric and Old High German literature, and translated four of the major Middle High German verse narratives.
Hermann Reichert is an Austrian philologist at the University of Vienna who specializes in Germanic studies.
Leslie Peter Johnson, also known as Peter Johnson, L. Peter Johnson, or L. P. Johnson, was a British Germanist, who specialized in the literature of the Middle High German "golden age". He was Reader in Medieval German Literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College.
Language and history in the early Germanic world is a book by Dennis Howard Green, the Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. It was published in hardback by Cambridge University Press in 1998. The book uses linguistic evidence for the study of early Germanic culture and history. A paperback edition was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000. An Italian translation was published in 2015.
Michael Stolz is a Swiss and German medievalist and professor at the University of Bern.
In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, written c. 1185 – c. 1210, are recognized as classics.
Arthur B. Groos is an American philologist, musicologist, medievalist and Germanist.
David Nicholas Yeandle is a British Germanist and author. He is Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow at King's College London and an Affiliated Lecturer in German at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on German language and literature, including Old High German, Middle High German, and the modern German language. Since taking early retirement in 2010, he has further developed a research interest in ecclesiastical history, particularly of the Anglican Church.