Kemp Malone (March 14, 1889 – October 13, 1971) was an American medievalist, etymologist, philologist, and specialist in

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He ...

. He was a lecturer and then professor of English literature at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

from 1924 to 1956.

Life and career

Born in

Minter City, Mississippi Minter City is an unincorporated community in Leflore County and Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, United States. It is part of the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area, and is within the Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Highway 8 intersec ...

, to an academic family, Kemp Malone graduated from Emory College (as it then was) in 1907, with the ambition of mastering all the languages that impinged upon the development of

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

. He spent several years in Germany, Denmark and Iceland. When

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

broke out, he served two years in the United States Army and was discharged with the rank of captain. Malone 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 ...

in 1945. He served as president of the

Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "str ...

, and other philological associations and was etymology editor of the ''American College Dictionary'', 1947. With

Louise Pound Louise Pound (June 30, 1872 – June 28, 1958) was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same y ...

and Arthur G. Kennedy, he founded the journal ''

American Speech ''American Speech'' is a quarterly academic journal of the American Dialect Society, established in 1925 and currently published by Duke University Press. It focuses primarily on the English language used in the Western Hemisphere, but also publi ...

'', "to present information about English in America in a form appealing to general readers". He resisted the views of Old English poetry as products of a purely

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.Jan Vansina, Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (19 ...

. He contended that we must look to poets' individual elaboration of traditional structures: "A given poet was reckoned worthy if he handled with skill the stuff of which, by convention, poems must be made". His interests ranged from 10th-century manuscripts to the etymology of contemporary comic strip names. American speech, the English language, the historical

Arthur Arthur is a masculine given name of uncertain etymology. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Ital ...

(his suggestion was the Roman ''

dux ''Dux'' (, : ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, ''dux'' coul ...

'' Lucius Artorius Castus),

Cædmon Cædmon (; fl. c. 657–684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he was orig ...

and ''

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...

'' (he edited a facsimile of the Thorkelin transcripts, 1951), ''

Deor "Deor" (or "The Lament of Deor") is an Old English poem found on folio 100r–100v of the late- 10th-century collection the Exeter Book. The poem consists of a reflection on misfortune by a poet whom the poem is usually thought to name Deor. The ...

'' – all were subjects among his hundreds of publications. He edited and translated a large corpus of medieval poetry, including ''

Widsith "Widsith" (, "far-traveller", lit. "wide-journey"), also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the '' Exeter Book'' (''pages 84v–87r''), a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the la ...

'' from the

Exeter Book The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...

(1936). A sample of his production is a 1941 published book about old English poems, that were transferred into modern English alliterative verse. Rare books from his library, donated 1971 to

Emory University Emory University is a private university, private research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory. Its main campu ...

, are part of the Ancient and Medieval History (MARBL) collection, held at Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University Libraries. The Kemp Malone library content were fully registered under Call number Z997.M35. His literary heritage (30 document boxes) were deposited in 1983 at

. The historian and biographer

Dumas Malone Dumas Malone (; January 10, 1892 – December 27, 1986) was an American historian, minister, and biographer. A professor by occupation, Malone spent the majority of his career teaching at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he served as the T ...

was his younger brother.

References

External links

Kemp Malone
at mswritersandmusicians.com
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
Kemp Malone papers, 1910–1970
{{DEFAULTSORT:Malone, Kemp 1889 births 1971 deaths American medievalists Johns Hopkins University faculty Anglo-Saxon studies scholars 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers Arthurian scholars People from Minter City, Mississippi Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America Linguistic Society of America presidents 20th-century American male writers Presidents of the Modern Language Association Members of the American Philosophical Society

Life and career

References

Further reading

External links