Arthur Walton Litz Jr. (October 31, 1929, in Nashville, Tennessee
– June 4, 2014) was an American literary historian and
critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...
who served as professor of
English Literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...
at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
from 1956 to 1993. He was the author or editor of over twenty collections of literary criticism, including various editions of
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
,
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
,
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, and
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
.
Litz graduated with an A.B. in English from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
in 1951 after completing a senior thesis titled "
Yoknapatawpha: A Study of
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
's Moral Vision." He then studied at
Merton College
Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor ...
,
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
as a
Rhodes Scholar
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world.
Esta ...
and received his
D.Phil. in 1954.
He studied alongside and, at one point, lived with cultural theorist
Stuart Hall, who described him as 'extraordinarily smart'. After two years' service in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...
,
he became the Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton in 1956, where he worked until his retirement in 1994.
Litz was also a longtime instructor at the
Bread Loaf School of English. He was named to the Eastman Visiting Professorship at
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world.
With a governing body of a master and aro ...
, in 1989. In 1991, he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
.
Litz married Marian Weller in 1958; they had four children.
He died of respiratory failure on June 4, 2014, aged 84, at the
University Medical Center of Princeton in Plainsboro, New Jersey. He is survived by his four children and six grandchildren.
References
External links
List of A. Walton Litz's academic papers at Princeton University Library; includes a photograph and brief career overview (dated 2003)''Yoknapatawpha: A Study of William Faulkner's Moral Vision''—Princeton University 1951 senior thesis by Arthur Walton Litz, Jr.June 2006 newsletter from Balliol College, Oxford, listing A. Walton Litz among the former George Eastman Professors at the College
1929 births
American Rhodes Scholars
Princeton University faculty
Princeton University alumni
Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
American literary critics
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
2014 deaths
20th-century American male writers
Members of the American Philosophical Society
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