Eleanor Duckett

Eleanor Shipley Duckett (born November 7, 1880 in Highbridge , Somerset , United Kingdom , † November 23, 1976 in Northampton , Massachusetts , USA ) was a medievalist and classical scholar .

biography

Eleanor Duckett was the daughter of bank manager Arthur Duckett and his wife Fannie Louise Shipley Gay. She was encouraged by her father to study classical texts. After graduating from college , she began studying at the University of London . In 1903 she made her bachelor's degree in English , in 1904 her master's degree in Latin and Greek and in 1905 a diploma in education . She taught at Sutton High School in Surrey until 1907 , before continuing her own education with a scholarship at Girton College , the University of Cambridge's first women's college . In 1911 she passed the Classical Honors Tripos exam , making her one of the first women to graduate from Cambridge. When she first presented a manuscript to a university professor for which she was looking for a publisher, the latter replied "politely" and with "British seriousness": "Do you want me to judge on its own merits or as the work of a women?" Do you want me to judge the work according to its own worth or that of a woman? ” She was refused a scholarship and admission to the first class honors exams at Cambridge.

In response, Duckett went to the United States in 1912, where she was able to do a doctorate on Studies in Ennius at the Bryn Mawr private university with another scholarship . In 1914 she became a lecturer at the Western College for Women in Oxford , Ohio , teaching Latin and Greek. From 1916 until her retirement in 1949 she was Professor of Classical Languages ​​and Literature at Smith College , a women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. She remained in the memory of her students because she could spontaneously translate practically any English script or speech, whether modern or historical, into Latin.

In 1926, Duckett met her colleague Mary Ellen Chase , who had come to Smith’s as a professor of English and an author . Soon after, the two women moved into a house on the college campus. They made numerous trips, to England and to Windswept , a house on the Maine coast that inspired Chase to write a novel of the same name. “It was quite clear that a deep bond of love united these two women” (“It was very clear that these two women were united by a deep bond of love”), writes the historian Susan Mosher Stuard. However, the two were very different: Chase was more extroverted and lively, Duckett shy and reserved. The successful writer Mary Ellen Chase had an invigorating influence on Eleanor Duckett, who developed in her interests and, with growing enthusiasm, began to write more peppy texts.

Eleanor Duckett shifted the focus of her publications to history - an area in which she was self-taught - and to texts that were scientifically sound but written specifically for lay people. She focused on the early Middle Ages , which she felt had been under-explored. She worked thematically from the 6th century , her last works dealt with topics from the 10th century . Critics complained that she relied too much on Christian sources for her representations. In her works, she also mentioned the achievements of women in the Middle Ages wherever possible: They were not abbots, bishops, emperors or popes, but historical women are always important for a readership of educated women, even if there is often little information about them . Though a lecturer in languages, Duckett gave Duckett the greatest joy and recognition in the history of Europe in the early Middle Ages.

As a professor emeritus, Eleanor Duckett also had a prominent position on campus ; she kept her office at the Neilson Library and spent considerable time researching and lecturing at Cambridge. She has traveled the world lecturing, researching, and receiving awards for her work. Some of her most important publications were written after her retirement. She was also very active at St. John's Episcopal Church in Northampton, giving lectures and organizing readings.

Eleanor Duckett shared her life with Mary Ellen Chase until her death in 1973. She ran into financial difficulties and had to put some of her property up for auction. She died three years later in a retirement home , around two weeks after her 96th birthday. Eleanor Duckett was buried next to Chase in a cemetery in Blue Hill , Maine, not far from the Chase family estate.

Honors

Eleanor Duckett has received numerous honors and awards. For example, Cambridge University awarded her a Doctor of Letters degree in 1952 for her work in medieval Latin literature - arguably a belated satisfaction for her. She received honorary doctorates from the University of London (1920), Smith College (1949) and St. Dunstan's University in Canada (1969). The Pen & Brush Club , an organization that promotes women in the arts, named their book Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars as the most important non-fiction book of 1947. In 1954 she became an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa . In 1968 Smith College named two adjoining dormitories Duckett House and Chase House .

Publications (selection)

• Mmt Eric Milner-White: The Book of Hugh and Nancy . Macmillan , New York 1938.
• The Gateway to the Middle Ages . Macmillan , New York 1938.
• Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars . Macmillan , New York 1947.
• Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne. His World and His Work . Macmillan , New York 1941.
• Saint Dustin of Canterbury. A Study of Monastic Reform in the Tenth Century . Collins, London 1955.
• Alfred the Great . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1956.
• The Wanderings Saints of the Early Middle Ages . Norton, New York 1959.
• Women and Their Letter in the Early Middle Ages (=  Margaret Asher Engel Lecture ). Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 1965.
• Death and Life in the Tenth Century . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1967.

literature

• Susan Mosher Stuard: Eleanor Shipley Duckett (1880-1976). Historian of the Latin Middle Ages . In: Jane Chance (ed.): Women Medievalists and the Academy . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI 2005, ISBN 0-299-20750-1 , pp. 213-226 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Eleanor Duckett in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Duckett, Eleanor Shipley .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Catherine J. Castner: Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. In: dbcs.rutgers.edu. Retrieved May 2, 2020 . 
2. ^ Stuard, Eleanor Shipley Duckett , p. 215.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. In: Smithipedia. Retrieved May 2, 2020 . 
4. ^ Stuard, Eleanor Shipley Duckett , p. 218.
5. ^ Stuard, Eleanor Shipley Duckett , p. 219.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Stuard, Eleanor Shipley Duckett , p. 224.
7. ^ Stuard, Eleanor Shipley Duckett , p. 223.