D. W. Robertson Jr.


Durant Waite Robertson Jr. was a scholar of medieval English literature and especially Geoffrey Chaucer. He taught at Princeton University from 1946 until his retirement in 1980 as the Murray Professor of English, and was "widely regarded as this century's most influential Chaucer scholar".

Early life

Robertson studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1944. His dissertation on the work of Robert Mannyng, A Study of Certain Aspects of the Cultural Tradition of Handlyng Synne, was written under the direction of G. R. Coffman and Urban Tigner Holmes Jr. Subsequently he revised and published three important articles from it.
Robertson taught briefly at the University of Maryland before joining the faculty at Princeton in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his career.

Scholarly career

Robertson's deeply historical approach to medieval English literature challenged and even angered many of the leading medievalists of the mid-20th century. Opposition to Robertson's critical approach at length took the form of a scholarly debate at the meeting of the English Institute of 1958–59. The book of papers published from that event proved that Robertson's "exegetical criticism", sometimes simply called "Robertsonianism", had many learned supporters as well as opponents.
Robertson's magnum opus was published in 1962 by Princeton University Press: A Preface to Chaucer. Studies in Medieval Perspectives, a massive work of 500 pages of text and 118 illustrations from medieval monastic manuscripts and religious sculpture and art. Critics were impressed by the extent of Robertson's reading in and grasp of primary sources, mainly in Latin and French, and secondary literature in every major European language as far back as the 19th century. Lynn Staley, Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities and Medieval & Renaissance Studies at Colgate University and one of Robertson's students, described it thus:
It was also intimidating to medievalists of his generation, most of whom had never seen any need to study the range of primary sources, particularly religious writings in Latin, which Robertson had mastered. As late as 1965, medievalist and folklore scholar Francis Lee Utley called it "a strange hodgepodge...insulting to the community of scholars and, indeed, to the Twentieth Century itself".
Scholarly supporters of Robertson's critical school gathered in March 1967 at the first annual conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at State University of New York at Binghamton, an event often referred to among medievalists as "the Courtly Love conference". The volume of papers from this conference, published the following year, has retained its importance as a watershed in the spread of a new paradigm of the concept of medieval courtly love.

Teaching at Princeton

Robertson was a popular and engaging lecturer, and his seminars were usually full. Professor Staley has summarized his approach as follows:
Among Robertson's most important scholarly legacies is the number of his students among the prominent medievalists of succeeding generations. These include Robert P. Miller, Paul Olson, Chauncey Wood, John V. Fleming, Alan T. Gaylord, David Lyle Jeffrey, Marc Pelen, and Lynn Staley.
Robertson retired from Princeton at the age of 65 in 1980. In his honor, Princeton University Press published Essays in Medieval Culture, a collection of 24 of his essays. Among them are some of Robertson's bold attempts to extend the application of "Robertsonianism" beyond the confines of the Middle Ages: to Renaissance art, sixteenth-century literature, and beyond.

Family

Robertson married Betty McLean Hansen in 1937. They had one daughter, Susanna Howley, and two sons, Durant Waite Robertson III and Douglas Robertson.

Retirement

Robertson's research in retirement took him in the direction of the social historical context of literature, an interest he had occasionally expressed earlier. He did it so well that scholar Peter G. Beidler included one of Robertson's later essays, "Simple Signs from Everyday Life in Chaucer" in a bibliography of Marxist approaches to Chaucer. Robertson would be shocked, but also no doubt amused, at this gesture.

Death

Suffering from declining health, Robertson entered a retirement home near his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he died in 1992.

Influence

Alan T. Gaylord, Dartmouth College:
Lee Patterson, Yale University:
Steven Justice, University of California, Berkeley:
Books: