Chauncey Brewster Tinker (October 22, 1876 – March 10, 1963) was a scholar of English Literature and

Sterling Professor Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in his or her field. It is akin to the rank of university professor at other universities. The appointment, made by the ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

Early life

Tinker was born on October 22, 1876, in

Auburn, Maine Auburn is a city in south-central Maine within the United States. The city serves as the county seat of Androscoggin County. The population was 24,061 at the 2020 census. Auburn and its sister city Lewiston are known locally as the Twin Citi ...

to Anson Phelps Tinker, a Yale graduate and minister, and Martha White. He attended

East Denver High School East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from ...

, then went to Yale to receive a BA (1899), MA (1900), and PhD (1902), after which he joined the school's faculty.

Career

In 1923, Tinker was made Sterling Professor of English Literature, and remained at the university until 1945. At Yale, Tinker was instrumental in establishing a rare books collection, of which he was named the curator in 1931, and in founding the

Elizabethan Club The Elizabethan Club is a social club at Yale University named for Queen Elizabeth I and her era. Its profile and members tend toward a literary disposition, and conversation is one of the Club's chief purposes. The Elizabethan Club's collectio ...

. His early work, completed in collaboration with Albert Stanburrough Cook, focused on Old English literature, while the remainder of his career focused on eighteenth century English literary scholarship, including that of

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford D ...

and his principal biographer,

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer S ...

. As a faculty member, Tinker was known as an opponent of

New Criticism New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned ...

. In his 2019 book, Possessed by Memory,

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

describes Tinker as “a scholar noted for the appearance of stigmata upon him during Passion Week.”

Death

Tinker died on March 10, 1963, and is buried at

Grove Street Cemetery Grove Street Cemetery or Grove Street Burial Ground is a cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, that is surrounded by the Yale University campus. It was organized in 1796 as the New Haven Burying Ground and incorporated in October 1797 to replace the ...

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

Selected publications

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References

External links

*
Works by or about Chauncey Brewster Tinker
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...