Background
McCall, John Patrick was born on July 17, 1927 in Yonkers, New York, United States. Son of Ambrose V. and Vera E. (Rush) McCall.
(A description of Chaucer's adaptation of classical materi...)
A description of Chaucer's adaptation of classical materials to various uses - comedy, tragedy, and allegory; theme, action, and character - this book is also an analysis of Chaucer's poetics. Chaucer's creative use of the classical past is shown as a central part of his virtuosity. The book begins with a general discussion of the medieval traditions of classical myth, showing how Chaucer made himself the first humanist of English literature - opening to England both the ancient world of Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan and also the contemporary perceptions of that world by such continental masters as Dante, Graunson, Boccaccio, and Froissart. Succeeding chapters move through the categories of Chaucer's aesthetic uses of classical materials in specific poems: brief allusions, adaptations of myth to moral allegory, references to places, and lampoons of classical divinities.Professor McCall concludes by contrasting Chaucer's 'rhetorics of fragmentation and discontinuity' with those of modern writers. Today such rhetorics have a despairing or apocalyptic tone. For Chaucer they conveyed 'patient acceptance of the world and one's own self.'
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0271002018/?tag=2022091-20
McCall, John Patrick was born on July 17, 1927 in Yonkers, New York, United States. Son of Ambrose V. and Vera E. (Rush) McCall.
AB, College of Holy Cross, 1949. Master of Arts, Princeton University, 1952. Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1955.
Doctor of Humane Letters, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, 1993.
Instructor, Georgetown University, 1955-1957;
assistant Professor of English, Georgetown University, 1957-1962;
associate professor, Georgetown University, 1962-1966;
professor, U. Cincinnati, 1966-1982;
head department English, U. Cincinnati, 1970-1976;
senior vice president, provost, U. Cincinnati, 1976-1982;
president, Knox College, 1982-1993;
president emeritus and professor emeritus English, Knox College, since 1993;
volunteer, Peace Corps, Turkmenistan, 1993-1995. Visiting professor Turkmen State University, 1994-1995. Vice chairman Governor's Task Force onRural Illinois, 1986.
President Associated Colls. Illinois, 1986-1988; chairman Associated Colls. of M.W., 1991-1992. Member education committee Illinois Board Higher Education, 1985, 90.
Member rural library panel, State of Illinois, 1992.
(A description of Chaucer's adaptation of classical materi...)
Executive-in-residence Xavier University Louisiana, since 1997. With Signal corpus, United States army, 1952-1954. Member Medieval Academy American Modern Language Association, American Association of University Professors, World Affairs Council New Orleans, Order of St. Louis, Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Married Mary-Berenice Morris, June 15, 1957. Children: Claire, Anne, Ambrose, Peter.