Background
Donald R. Howard was born on September 18, 1927, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. He was a son of Albert and Emily Louise Howard. He grew up in Massachusetts.
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
In 1954 Donald R. Howard gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Florida.
(Chaucer was born in the latter half of the fourteenth cen...)
Chaucer was born in the latter half of the fourteenth century, an age of revolution and devastation when Europe was convulsed by the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the social and intellectual upheavals that marked the "autumn of Feudalism." The son of a wealthy London vintner, he maneuvered his way into the turbulent courts of Edward III and Richard II, and thus, without holding noble rank himself, he was able to witness the violent drama of royal power. It was, as Howard demonstrates, the perfect vantage point for a poet. Chaucer’s own poetic development from the mannered medieval style of The Book of the Duchess to the rich, comic, human complexity of The Canterbury Tales reflects the transformation of his world. With The Canterbury Tales and the darker, more formal epic Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer established English for all time as a language of literature.
https://www.amazon.com/Chaucer-His-Life-Works-World/dp/0449903419/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Chaucer%3A+His+Life%2C+His+Works%2C+His+World+Howard&qid=1582556205&s=books&sr=1-1
1987
Donald R. Howard was born on September 18, 1927, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. He was a son of Albert and Emily Louise Howard. He grew up in Massachusetts.
In 1950 Donald R. Howard received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University. In 1951 he obtained a Master of Arts degree from Rutgers University. In 1954 Howard gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Florida.
From 1945 to 1955 Donald R. Howard was an instructor at the University of Florida. In 1955 he began as an instructor and later became an associate professor of English Ohio State University and worked until 1963. From 1963 to 1966 Howard served as an associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.
From 1966 to 1967 Howard worked as an associate professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1967 to 1977 he was a professor of English at Johns Hopkins University and the Caroline S. Donovan Professor of English from 1973 to 1977. From 1977 to 1985 he served as a professor of English at Stanford University and the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities from 1985 to 1987.
His first published work of literary scholarship occurred in 1966 with The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World. The book explores temptation in medieval literature, which reflected Western Europe's preoccupation with the morality fable in the Book of Genesis that recounts Adam and Eve’s capitulation to desire and with it humanity’s subsequent "fall from grace."
In The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, he discusses the epic most closely associated with Chaucer, calling it Chaucer’s great unfinished work. The Canterbury Tales, a poem of 17,000 lines, presents a group of pilgrims who entertain one another by retelling an array of tales that represent a spectrum of medieval literary styles. Howard wrote Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity in 1980.
(Chaucer was born in the latter half of the fourteenth cen...)
1987Donald R. Howard was a member of the Modern Language Association of America, the Medieval Academy of America, Modern Humanities Research Association, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi.