Background
Alan was born on March 12, 1932, in New York, United States. He was the son of Jack and Ida Semat Grob.
1983
Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States
English Department faculty members Grob, Wood, Patten, Rice University.
Utica College, Utica, New York, United States
In 1952, Alan earned a bachelor's degree at Utica College.
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Alan received a master's degree and a doctorate.
(Though critics of Arnold have long recognized the profoun...)
Though critics of Arnold have long recognized the profound bleakness of his poetry, its tragic view of life, Alan Grob's A Longing Like Despair is the first book-length study that takes that dark vision as the interpretive key to the poetry and as justification for Matthew Arnold's claim to be in the vanguard of an emergent modernity. A major aim of Grob's study is to show Arnold as poet to be possessed of far greater philosophic depth and subtlety than his critics have usually credited him with by identifying the deep affinities and shared weltanschauung of his poetic vision with the metaphysical pessimism of Schopenhauer, the major European philosopher whose insistence on the cosmic opposition between the world as will and the world as idea provided the most important philosophic alternative in the nineteenth century to the age's otherwise dominant progressive historicism.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874137527/?tag=2022091-20
2002
Alan was born on March 12, 1932, in New York, United States. He was the son of Jack and Ida Semat Grob.
In 1952, Alan earned a bachelor's degree at Utica College. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he received a master's degree and a doctorate.
Grob served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS General W.A. Mann.
He joined the Rice English Department in 1961 and served as chairman from 1981 to 1987. In 1973 he wrote The Philosophic Mind: A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetry and Thought, 1797-1805.
He taught courses in Shakespeare, British Romantic poetry, Wordsworth and Keats and Victorian literature at Rice for more than 40 years before retiring in 2002. He served as a faculty associate at Hanszen College from 1962 until 2002. After retirement, Grob continued to influence the university by funding scholarships and programs.
(Though critics of Arnold have long recognized the profoun...)
2002Grob identified two essentials for good teaching: careful preparation and interest in students as individuals.
Bruce Dunlevie of Menlo Park, California, a Rice graduate and a partner in the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, said Grob was "a man of intellect, wit and great kindness, but above all his instinct for knowing and doing the right thing always distinguished him. His passing will deprive Rice of one of its great spiritual leaders."
Alan was married on Shirley Miller Grob, they had a son and a daughter (Julie Grob).