Armand E. Singer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Armand Edward Singer (born November 30, 1914 in Detroit , Michigan ; died July 12, 2007 in Morgantown , West Virginia ) was an American Romance studies and professor at West Virginia University . He was the first Don Juan bibliographer and is considered the most important.

life and work

Singer was the only child of Elvin Satori Singer and Fredericka Elizabeth (Edwards) Singer Goetz and studied at Amherst College in Massachusetts and at Duke University in Durham , North Carolina . In 1939 he received a diploma from the Université de Paris , from 1940 he taught Spanish and French at West Virginia University (WVU), whose faculty he was to belong to for forty years, until his retirement. In 1944 he completed his Ph.D. at Duke University , in 1947 he was appointed Assistant Professor at WVU, and in 1955 Associate Professor . In 1960 he was given the chair for Romance languages . From 1963 to 1972 he also served as chair of the humanistic faculty of the WVU. Singer remained connected to the university even in retirement, leading a graduate course on research methods until 1995 and also teaching the Appalachian Lifelong Learners course.

From the 1940s onwards he dealt with Don Juan material , the bibliographical record of which kept him busy until 2005 and which developed into his scientific life's work. Singer was heavily involved in research at his university and took on a variety of functions both on campus and in a number of scientific societies. From 1948 to 2007 he was editor or publisher of the West Virginia University Philological Papers , which is mainly devoted to the study of literature and film. In 1976 his monograph on the French novelist Paul Bourget was published and in the same year he took over the direction of the first colloquium on literature and film , which was organized annually at the WVU and which he was to organize a further twelve times until 2005. He was also an active member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society and was known for his amusing and highly informative lectures on the history of the society, which he gave at the new member admission ceremonies for twenty years.

Singer had a number of hobbies, besides philately writing limericks , traveling , hiking and jazz . In some areas he deepened his knowledge to such an extent that lectures, essays, book publications and functions in various associations emerged. For example, he traveled to countries on all continents as well as the North and South Poles , hiked the Grand Canyon fifteen times , began skydiving at an old age and edited the volume Essays on the Literature of Mountaineering . He was a member of the American Philatelic Society , was considered a world-renowned expert on postage stamps from Nepal and Tibet and published standard works on these specialist areas in the 1990s. In 1996 and 2004 he edited two volumes of Limericks at Randy Billy Goat Press in Boston.

Singer was married to Mary Rebecca White Singer for 64 years , who died before him. The couple have one daughter, Fredericka Ann Hill .

Don Juan Bibliography

During his life Singer occupied himself with the bibliography of Don Juan material . In 1954 a first 174-page bibliographic volume appeared in the West Virginia University Bulletin : A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme. Versions and Criticism. In 1956, 1958 and 1959, Singer published supplements, which he finally integrated in 1965 into the 370-page second edition of the volume. In the years 1966 to 1990 another five supplements appeared before he redrafted the work in 1993, leaving out the secondary literature, but published the original sources on 415 pages as The Don Juan Theme . Supplements to this volume appeared in 1998 and 2003, again in the West Virginia University Bulletin as well as all previous and new editions. A final amendment from 2005 was published on the Internet.

During his lifetime, Singer transferred the rights to this bibliography to the Viennese theater scholar Hans Ernst Weidinger , who had this work digitized in the Don Juan Archive Vienna and made available online.

Book publications (selection)

  • A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme. Versions and Criticism. In: West Virginia University Bulletin. Series 54. No.10-1, April 1954. 174 pp. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
    • Second edition 1965
  • The Don Juan Theme: An Annotated Bibliography of Versions, Analogues, Uses, and Adaptations. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Times West Virginian : Armand Singer , July 14, 2007 (obituary in English)
  2. ↑ Amherst College : Armand E. Singer '35 , accessed May 6, 2015 (obituary in English)
  3. ^ Don Juan Archive Vienna: Armand Edward Singer: Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme. ( Memento of May 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) , accessed May 5, 2015; see also [1]
  4. ↑ Don Juan Archive Vienna: Armand Edward Singer: Latest Supplement to “The Don Juan Theme, An Annotated Bibliography of Versions, Analogues, Uses, and Adaptions”, March 2005 , accessed on May 5, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Singer, Armand E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Singer, Armand Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Romance studies and professor at West Virginia University
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 2007
Place of death Morgantown , West Virginia