Philip John Ford

Philip John Ford (born March 28, 1949 in Ilford , † April 8, 2013 ) was a British Romance studies and neo-Latin philologist .

After attending the Ilford County High School for Boys, Ford studied Modern and Medieval Languages ​​in the unusual combination of French, Latin and Modern Greek at King's College (Cambridge) . After graduating, he began his doctoral studies with Ian D. McFarlane in 1972 , which he completed in 1976 with a thesis on George Buchanan . He then went to the University of Bordeaux for a year , where he acquired a maîtrise ès lettres in 1977. On his return he was made a Research Fellow at Girton College , Cambridge, and a year later a Lecturer in French at the University of Aberdeen . In 1981/1982 he returned to Cambridge University as an assistant lecturer. In 1982 he became a Fellow of Clare College and Director of Studies in Modern Languages. In 1986 he was made a lecturer, in 1999 a reader and in 2004 a personal professorship was established for him. Ford died of cancer.

Ford was Vice-President of the Société Française pour l'étude du Seizième Siècle from 2006 to 2009 , President of the Fédération internationale des Instituts et Sociétés pour l'Étude de la Renaissance from 2007 to 2013 and a member of the Executive Board of the International Association for 15 years for Neo-Latin Studies and finally its President from 2006 to 2009. In 2001 he was also awarded the title of Chevalier and in 2004 an Officier des French Ordre des Palmes Académiques . The Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique elected him as a corresponding member in 2004. In 2009 Ford was elected a Fellow of the British Academy .

Ford worked on French, English and Latin literature of the Renaissance. A first monograph after the dissertation was again dedicated to George Buchanan, the second to the French poet Pierre de Ronsard . This was followed by another on the Homer reception of the Renaissance and a fourth on the contentious relationship between the Latin and national languages in the Renaissance. Ford also presented critical editions of a text by George Buchanan and the French playwright Alexandre Hardy . Various edited volumes have also emerged from a large number of conferences. With Jan Bloemendal and Charles Fantazzi , Ford finally published a posthumous encyclopedia of the neo-Latin world, the first of its kind.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

• The Judgment of Palaemon: The Contest between Neo-Latin and Vernacular Poetry in Renaissance France. Leiden 2013, (excerpts online)
• De Troie à Ithaque: Reception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance. Genève 2007, (excerpts online) .
• Ronsard's Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study. Tempe AZ 1997.
• George Buchanan, Prince of Poets. With an Edition (Text, Translation, Commentary) of the 'Miscellaneorum liber'. Aberdeen, 1982.
• The Poetical Works of George Buchanan Before His Final Return to Scotland. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1977.

Edition

• Alexandre Hardy, Panthee. (Textes Littéraires 53). Exeter, 1984.

Editorships

• with Jan Bloemendal and Charles Fantazzi (eds.): Brill's Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World. 2 vols. Brill, Leiden 2014.
• with Roger PH Green (Ed.): George Buchanan, Poet and Dramatist. Swansea, 2009.
• with Y. Haskell and Philip Hardie (Eds.): Poets and Teachers. Latin Didactic Poetry and the Didactic Authority of the Latin Poet from the Renaissance to the Present. Bari, 1999.

literature

• Neil Kenny: Philip John Ford 1949–2013 , in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 13, 2014, pp. 217-248, (online) . (with photography)
• Neil Kenny: Philip Ford (1949–2013) , in: French Studies 67.4, 2013, pp. 593-595, (online) .
• Michael Moriarty: Professor Philip Ford: Scholar of the Renaissance , in: The Independent May 15, 2013. (with photography)
• Ingrid De Smet, in: Renaissance, Humanisme, Réforme 76, 2013, pp. 8-10; dies., in: Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 15, 2013, pp. 5-9; dies., In Memoriam Philip J. Ford (1949-2013) , in: The Renaissance Society of America , July 16, 2013, (online) .
• Gillian Jondorf, in: The Year 2012–2013: The Annual Review of Girton College (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 109-110.
• John O'Brien: Professor Philip Ford , in: The Times , June 20, 2013, (online) and ders., Bulletin de Liaison: Société Française d'Étude du Seizième Siècle 77, May 2013, pp. 27-28.

Web links

• Literature by and about Philip John Ford in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)