Geoffrey H. Hartman (August 11, 1929 – March 14, 2016) was a German-born
American
literary theorist, sometimes identified with the
Yale School of deconstruction, although he cannot be categorised by a single school or method. Hartman spent most of his career in the comparative literature department at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
, where he also founded the
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.
Biography
Geoffrey H. Hartmann was born in
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...
in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
, in an
Ashkenazi
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family.
In 1939 he left Germany for England as an unaccompanied ''
Kindertransport'' child refugee, sent away by his family to escape the Nazi regime. He came to the United States in 1946, where he was reunited with his mother, and later became an American citizen. Upon arrival in the US, his mother changed the family surname to "Hartman" to obscure its Germanic origin.
Hartman attended
Queens College, City University of New York
Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than ...
and received his PhD from Yale. After appointments at the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 co ...
and
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in the 1950s, Hartman returned to Yale and was eventually made
Sterling Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
. One of his long-term interests was the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
poet
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
.
His work explores the nature of the creative imagination, as well as the interrelationship of literature and literary commentary.
["Geoffrey H. Hartman." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2016. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, 17 October 2016.] He helped found the
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale's
Sterling Memorial Library, and lectured on issues dealing with the production and implications of testimony.
Bibliography
*''The Unmediated Vision: An Interpretation of Wordsworth,
Hopkins
Hopkins is an English, Welsh and Irish patronymic surname. The English name means "son of Hob". ''Hob'' was a diminutive of ''Robert'', itself deriving from the Germanic warrior name ''Hrod-berht'', translated as "renowned-fame". The Robert spe ...
,
Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogn ...
, and
Valéry'' (1954)
*''
André Malraux'' (1960)
*''Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787-1814'' (1964)
*''Beyond Formalism: Literary Essays, 1958-1970'' (1970)
*''The Fate of Reading and Other Essays'' (1975)
*''Akiba's Children'' (1978)
*''Psychoanalysis and the Question of the Text: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1976-77'' (1978, editor)
*''
Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today'' (1980)
*''Saving the Text: Literature/
Derrida/Philosophy'' (1981)
*''Easy Pieces'' (1985)
*''Midrash and Literature'' (1986, editor)
*''Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective'' (1986, editor)
*''The Unremarkable Wordsworth'' (1987)
*''Minor Prophecies: The Literary Essay in the
Culture Wars'' (1991)
*''The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
'' (1996)
*''The Fateful Question of Culture'' (1997)
*''A Critic's Journey: Literary Reflections, 1958-1998'' (1999)
*''Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against Inauthenticity'' (2004)
*''A Scholar's Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe'' (2007)
See also
*
List of deconstructionists
References
External links
* Compiled by Eddie Yeghiayan in 1992, and updated circa 2001
*For a review of Hartman's memoirs, see
1929 births
2016 deaths
American literary critics
Deconstruction
German Ashkenazi Jews
Kindertransport refugees
American people of German-Jewish descent
German emigrants to the United States
Jewish American writers
American academics of English literature
Yale Sterling Professors
{{US-English-academic-bio-stub