Donald Thornhill Torchiana

Background

Donald Thornhill Torchiana was born on October 22, 1923, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of Paul John and Martha Torchiana. He had a brother, Jack.

Education

In 1947 Donald Thornhill Torchiana received a Bachelor of Arts degree from DePauw University. In 1949 he obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iowa. In 1953 Torchiana gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from this university.

Career

Donald T. Torchiana served as a captain and B-17 pilot in the United States 8th Air Force during the last three years of World War II and was awarded the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. After the war, he transferred to the Air Force Reserve, where he served until 1960.

He came to Northwestern University in 1953 and was an instructor in English from 1953 to 1959, an assistant professor from 1959 to 1963, an associate professor from 1963 to 1968, a professor of English from 1968 to 1989, and was named a professor emeritus of English in 1989. During these years he served on many departmental and University committees, including the Comparative Literature Committee, General Faculty Committee, Para-Education Committee, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, General Studies Committee, Budget Committee, Executive Committee, and the Department of English Graduate Committee. His instructional involvement beyond Northwestern included participation in the Yeats International Summer School as either lecturer or seminar director. He also was a Fulbright lecturer at University College, Galway, Ireland during parts of the 1960s.

Torchiana authored two books, W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland and Backgrounds for Joyce’s Dubliners. He also edited Some New Letters from W. B. Yeats to Lady Gregory (1963) and served as a compiler for English Literature, 1660-1800; A Bibliography of Modern Studies, v. V: 1961-1965 and v.VI: 1966-1970 (1972).

Achievements

• Donald Thornhill Torchiana is best remembered as an expert on Irish literature and poetry who brought the writings of William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and other authors of the Georgian period to life for Northwestern University students. He was among the longest-serving professors. He is also best known as the author of W.B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland. His works received high praise from critics.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Backgrounds for Joyce's Dubliners

    (Dubliners was James Joyce’s first major publication. Sett...)

    1986
  • W.B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland 1966

Views

English Professor Emeritus Alfred Appel said Donald T. Torchiana had a firm belief that the beauty of the texts he read was more powerful than anyone’s opinion of them. "He believed that the literary text came first, and that theory and analysis was a distant second to the importance of the text and the great writers," Appel said.

Membership

Donald T. Torchiana was a member of the 18th Century Studies Society of America, Irish Georgian Society, Dublin Round Table, Phi Beta Kappa.

Personality

Hale, bluff, and showing by turns a lacerating wit and gracious hospitality, Donald T. Torchiana held a nearly legendary stature at Northwestern. He could sonorously recite memorized and lengthy passages of 19th Century Irish literature, and he hosted the kind of end-of-semester lawn parties at his Evanston home that featured a harpist in the background and Mr. Torchiana circulating in a blazer and straw boater.

"He was a fairly outspoken and colorful character," said his son William D. "He had a broad range of interests, was sort of a larger-than-life individual." "He had both a gruff side and a sort of hearty, carefree, uproarious side," Fisher Miller said. "He was a disarming combination of the traditional and the rakish."

Connections

On May 17, 1952, Donald Thornhill Torchiana married Rena Margarida Le Sueur. They have three children: Katherine Leslie, David FitzGerald, William DeGroot. In 1972 the couple divorced.

Father:

Paul John Torchiana

Mother:

Martha Torchiana

Spouse:

Rena Margarida Le Sueur

Son:

William DeGroot Torchiana

Daughter:

Katherine Leslie Grenier

Son:

David FitzGerald Torchiana

Brother:

Jack Torchiana

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2010