Albert Stanburrough Cook
Albert Stanburrough Cook | |
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Born | March 6, 1853 Montville, New Jersey, U.S. |
Died | September 1, 1927 | (aged 74)
Occupation | Professor at Yale University |
Known for | Translation and criticism of Old English works |
Notable work | The Christ of Cynewulf Judith, an Old English Epic Fragment (crit. ed.) |
Albert Stanburrough Cook (March 6, 1853 – September 1, 1927) was an American philologist, literary critic, and scholar of Old English. He has been called "the single most powerful American Anglo-Saxonist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."[1][2]
Life[]
Cook was born in Montville, New Jersey.[3] He began working as a mathematics tutor at sixteen and was offered chemistry professorship in Fukui, Japan before entering college, which he declined.[4] He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers College in 1872, writing a thesis on "The Inclined Planes of the Morris Canal," and taught there and at while completing a Master of Science degree.[4][5]
Having already learned German, he went on to study in Göttingen and Leipzig from 1877 to 1878, where he began learning languages including Latin, Greek, Italian, and Old English.[4] He returned to the United States for two years as an associate in English at Johns Hopkins University,[6] then in 1881 he spent time in London with phoneticist Henry Sweet studying manuscripts of Cynewulf and the Old Northumbrian Gospels at the British Museum.[4] This work allowed him to complete a PhD in 1882 at the University of Jena, where he studied under Eduard Sievers.[1] Cook became a professor of English in the University of California in 1882, where he re-organized the teaching of English in the state of California, introduced English requirements for university admission, and edited many texts for reading in secondary schools.[4][6] He became chair of English language and literature at Yale University in 1889, where he remained for thirty-two years until his death and became a prolific editor of major English works and literary criticism.
Cook's best-known scholarly work is in Old English and in poetics, fields in which he produced over three hundred publications.[6] He translated, edited, and revised Sievers' Old English Grammar (1885), edited Judith (1888), The Christ of Cynewulf (1900), Asser's Life of King Alfred (1905), and The Dream of the Rood (1905), and prepared A First Book in Old English Grammar (1894). He also edited, with annotations, Sidney's Defense of Poesie (1890); Shelley's Defense of Poetry (1891); Newman's Poetry (1891); Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost (1892); The Art of Poetry (1892), being the essays of Horace, Vida and Boileau; and Leigh Hunt's What is Poetry (1893); and published Higher Study of English (1906).[1]
Cook married twice: first to Emily Chamberlain (1886), then to Elizabeth Merrill (1911).[4] He died on September 1, 1927, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Bibliography[]
Books[]
- The Phonological Investigation of Old English (1888)
- Pen Sketches and Reminiscences of Sixty Years (1901)
- The Higher Study of English (1906)
- Select Translations from Old English Prose (1908)
- The Authorized Version of the Bible and Its Influence (1910)
- The Last Months of Chaucer's earliest patron (1916)
- The Possible Begetter of the Old English Beowulf and Widsith (1922)
- The Old English Andreas and Bishop Acca of Hexham (1924)
- Cynewulf's Part In Our Beowulf (1925)
- The Aims in the Teaching of English Literature (1925)
- Beowulfian and Odyssian Voyages (1926)
- Sources of the Biography of AIdhelm (1927)
Textbooks[]
- Anglo-Saxon (1879)
- A First Book in Old English Grammar (1894)
- Exercises in Old English (1899)
- Literary Middle English Reader (1915)
Reference works[]
- Extracts from the Anglo Saxon Laws (1880)
- A Bibliography of Chaucer (1886)
- A Glossary of The Old Northumbrian Gospels (1894)
- Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers (1898)
- A Concordance to the English Poems of Thomas Gray (1908)
- A Concordance to Beowulf (1911)
Critical editions[]
- Judith, an Old English Epic Fragment (1888)
- Shelly, Percy. (1890) Defense of Poetry
- Sidney, Philip. (1890) The Defense of Poesy
- Newman, John Henry.
- (1891) Poetry, With Reference to Aristotle's Poetics
- (1892) The Art of Poetry: Containing the Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida and Boileau, with the translations of Howes, Pitt and Soame
- Leigh, Hunt. (1893) What Is Poetry
- Milton, John. (1896) Paradise Lost, Books I and II
- Burke, Edmund. (1896) Speech on Conciliation with America
- Tennyson, Lord Alfred. (1897) The Princess
- The Christ of Cynewulf (1900; 1909 (2nd ed.))
- Bacon, Francis. (1904) Advancement of Learning
- The Dream of the Rood: an Old English Poem attributed to Cynewulf (1905)
- Sir Eglamour: A Middle English Romance (1911)
- The Old English Elene, Phoenix, and Physiologus (1919)
- The Old English Physiologus (1921). Trans. James Hall Pitman
- Addison, Joseph. (1926) Criticisms on Paradise Lost
Translations[]
- Siever, Eduard. (1885) An Old English Grammar
- Asser, John. (1906) Life of King Alfred
Edited volumes[]
- The Bible and English Prose Style: Selections and Comments (1892)
- Selected Translations from Old English Prose (1908), ed. with Chauncey Brewster Tinker
- Some Accounts of the Bewcastle Cross Between the Years 1607 and 1861 (1914)
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cook, Albert Stanburrough". Encyclopædia Britannica. 7. (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 71.
- ^ Drout, M. D. C. (2011). "The Cynewulf of Albert S. Cook: Philology and English Studies in America". English Studies. 92 (3): 237–258. doi:10.1080/0013838X.2011.564778. S2CID 154922114.
- ^ "Prof. Albert S. Cook of Yale Dead at 74; Occupied Chair of English at the University for Thirty-two Years". The New York Times. September 2, 1927. Retrieved February 23, 2011.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Shawcross, John T. (1966). "Albert Stanburrough Cook, Class of 1872". Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries. 29 (3): 108–112. doi:10.14713/jrul.v29i3.1465. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
- ^ "Cook, Albert Stanburrough". National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. 9. New York: James T. White. 1899. pp. 167–168.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Whitman, Charles H. (November 1927). "Albert Stanburrough Cook: A Tribute". Rutgers Alumni Monthly. 7 (2). Retrieved 15 March 2015.
Further reading[]
- Bibliography of the Writings of Albert Stanburrough Cook. New Haven. 1923. OCLC 630011488.
- Cooper, Lane (1927). "Albert Stanburrough Cook, 1853-1927". Speculum. 2 (4): 498–501. doi:10.1086/spc.2.4.2847540. JSTOR 2847540. S2CID 162913427.
External links[]
- 1853 births
- 1927 deaths
- American philologists
- Anglo-Saxon studies scholars
- Johns Hopkins University faculty
- People from Montville, New Jersey
- Rutgers University alumni
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- Yale University faculty
- Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America