John Orr

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John Orr (born June 4, 1885 in Egremont , Cumbria , † August 10, 1966 in Edinburgh ) was a British Romanist who grew up in Australia.

life and work

Orr, whose Scottish family emigrated to Australia in the year of his birth, went to school in Launceston and from 1902 studied law at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. In 1905 he came to Balliol College , Oxford on a scholarship , and in 1910 did his BA. He then studied in Paris with Jules Gilliéron, married a French woman, and in 1913 was the first graduate of a "BLitt degree in Romance Studies" at Oxford with the work Les Oeuvres de Guiot de Provins, poète lyrique et satirique (Paris / Manchester 1915, Geneva 1974). He taught in Manchester from 1913, and from 1915 at East London (later Queen Mary) College, London . From 1916 to 1918 he served as an officer in France.

From 1919 to 1933 he was professor of French at the University of Manchester (successor: Mildred K. Pope ) and from 1933 to 1955 at the University of Edinburgh in the chair for French, from 1951 also for Romance philology. In 1952 he was elected to the British Academy . Orr received honorary degrees from the Universities of Manchester (1938), Caen (1945) and St Andrews (1955).

A street in Caen was named after him (rue du Professeur John Orr).

Other works

  • (Ed.): Iorgu Iordan: An introduction to Romance linguistics. Translation from Romanian. London 1937 (reprint with an appendix Thirty years on by Rebecca Posner. Oxford 1970).
  • (Ed.): Eustache d'Amiens: Le Boucher d'Abbeville. London 1947.
  • (Ed.): Jean Renart: Le Lai de l'ombre. Edinburgh 1948.
  • (Ed.): Contes et poèmes de Jules Supervielle. Edinburgh 1950.
  • Words and Sounds in English and French. Oxford 1952.
  • Old French and Modern English idiom. Oxford 1962.
  • Three Studies on Homonymics. Edinburgh 1963.
  • Essais d'étymologie et de philologie françaises. Paris 1963.

literature

  • Studies in Romance Philology and French Literature Presented to John Orr by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends. Manchester 1953.
  • Homage à la mémoire de John Orr. In: Revue de linguistique romane. 31, 1967.
  • TBW Reid in: Modern Language Review. 1967.
  • Alfred Ewert in: Proceedings of the British Academy. 52, 1966, pp. 323-331 ( PDF ).
  • IH Smith: Orr, John (1885-1966). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. 15, 2000, pp. 542-543.
  • Rebecca Posner: Romance Linguistics in Oxford 1840-1940. In: Richard Baum, Klaus Böckle, Franz Josef Hausmann, Franz Lebsanft (eds.): Lingua et Traditio. History of linguistics and recent philologies. Festschrift for Hans Helmut Christmann on his 65th birthday. Tübingen 1994, pp. 375-383.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Orr, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Egremont , Cumbria
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1966
Place of death Edinburgh