Charles Muscatine

Charles Samuel Muscatine (born November 28, 1920 in Brooklyn , New York City , † March 12, 2010 in Oakland , California ) was an American literary scholar and university professor who studied the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer by looking at his models realigned from French literature and reformed university teaching at the University of California, Berkeley through the influence of the Free Speech Movement (FSM).

Life

Studies, World War II and start of teaching

Muscatine, who grew up in Trenton , completed an undergraduate degree and postgraduate studies in English at Yale University after attending school , which he completed in 1941 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA English) and in 1942 with a Master of Arts (MA English). He then joined the US Navy during World War II and took part in the landings in North Africa and Operation Avalanche , the Allied landing in Salerno , on September 9, 1943. For his bravery in Operation Overlord , the Allied landing in the Normandy on June 6, 1944 in the Omaha Beach section of Operation Neptune , he was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal .

After the war, he continued his studies and received a doctorate in English from Yale University in 1948. He began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley in 1948 in the Department of English as an assistant professor of Middle English literature . In 1949, after calling on the principles of academic freedom , he and 30 other professors refused to sign an anti-communist oath of loyalty which the state of California had called for . He was then dismissed from university service. He then took over a temporary teaching position at Wesleyan University before he could resume teaching at Yale University in 1954 after the California Supreme Court ruled that the oath was unconstitutional.

Importance and aftermath of the Chaucer studies

In his 1957 book Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning , published by the University of California Press , which remains a fundamental work on understanding the English poet, he expanded his research beyond traditional source studies and denied them widespread view of Chaucer that he was a poet who had evolved from a stilted conventionalism to a robust, pure English realism. Rather, Muscatine described Chaucer as an artist who molded for his own benefit the subjects and means he found in the courtly and civic poetry that developed in France in the 12th and 13th centuries .

David Lawton, Administrative Director of the New Chaucer Society, described Muscatine's works and research as follows:

“They remained amazingly timeless. The sheer quality of his reading continued to an almost impossible high standard, and practically single-handedly he opened up Chaucer's studies on France and its secular French heritage. There was a great deal of growth in this area, most of which followed the paths that he had made. "

'It remains astonishingly undated. The sheer quality of Muscatine's reading continues to set an almost impossibly high standard, and virtually single-handedly he opened up Chaucer studies to France and Chaucer's secular, French heritage. There has been a huge growth in this field, most of it following along the routes he made. '

Support of the Free Speech Movement and Muscatine Report

The unrest within the student movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s brought a new role for Muscartine. During the Free Speech Movement era, during which students held sit-ins and demonstrations to protest restrictions on political freedom of speech on campus, he played a leading role in mediating between students and university administration. His sympathy for student demands on free speech came from his own tough experiences in the early McCarthy era .

After the immediate crisis on campus subsided, he was asked to chair a faculty committee that would consider proposals for educational reform at the university. The resulting report, Education at Berkeley , published in 1966 , also known as the Muscatine Report, garnered widespread attention for the audacity of his plans to establish non-traditional courses and remove interdisciplinary barriers.

Although 16 of the 42 proposals were accepted by the university senate, most proposals could not be kept. Within a few years the desire for radical changes subsided, so that Muscatine concluded in 1972: “The faculties are dealing with their own matters again” ('Faculties are ready to sit on their private concerns again').

However, he took the initiative and helped found the Collegiate Seminar Program , an experimental program at the university known as Strawberry Creek College , which he directed in the 1970s. The ideas of the program later influenced community colleges and experimental universities across the country that followed the learning community model .

Later publications and last years of life

In his teaching activities, unlike many of his colleagues, he focused on the area of ​​undergraduate studies and, together with Marlene Griffith, wrote two textbooks as an introduction to the study of English and English literature, namely The Borzoi College Reader (1966) and First Person Singular (1973). In 1974 Muscatine was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In addition to his fundamental studies of Chaucer's French sources, he also published a collection of essays , Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer (1972), The Old French Fabliaux (1986), and Medieval Literature, Style and Culture (1999) .

Even after his retirement in 1991, he campaigned for a reform of undergraduate studies and most recently published Fixing College Education: A New Curriculum for the 21st Century in 2009 . Muscatine died of complications from pneumonia .

Publications

• Chaucer and the French tradition , 1957
• The book of Geoffrey Chaucer , 1963
• The Borzoi college reader , 1966, reprinted 1992
• Poetry and crisis in the age of Chaucer , 1972
• First person singular , 1973
• The Old French fabliaux , 1986
• Student's guide for the Borzoi college reader, sixth edition , co-editor Marlene Griffith, 1988
• Medieval literature, style, and culture , 1999
• The loyalty oath, the Free Speech Movement, and education reforms at the University of California, Berkeley , 2004
• Fixing college education , 2009

Web links

• Proof of publication ( Open Library )
• Charles Muscatine, Chaucer Scholar, Dies at 89 . In: The New York Times, March 20, 2010