Background
Greene, Thomas McLernon was born on May 17, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of George Durgin and Elizabeth (McLernon) Greene.
(Based on four Nielson Lectures delivered at Smith College...)
Based on four Nielson Lectures delivered at Smith College, this book examines a series of "promenade poems," lyrics that follow a poetic speaker moving through a landscape and responding to it. Thomas M. Greene invites the reader to consider a wide range of poets, beginning with Amy Clampitt and A. R. Ammons, continuing with Petrarch, Ronsard, Saint-Amant, Milton, Vaughan, and Marvell, and concluding with two representative Romantics, Wordsworth and Whitman. Greene's discussions of this rich body of texts stimulate reflection at several levels. They can be read first of all simply as analyses of several memorable poems exhibiting a similar structure over a period of seven centuries. They can also be read as meditations on the workings of lyric poetry, which is always attempting to bring into sharper focus the sensibility of a speaker whose emergence depends on her naming and evoking the objects surrounding her. Thus Greene argues that the distinction of a poetic consciousness lies in its "permeability," permitting a more intimate interplay between internal and external realms. His title is drawn from a line by Whitman: "You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!" Finally, at yet another level, Greene's book presents a way of thinking about language which, recalling the Heideggerean theory of "ereignis," suggests that only through the projective act of naming can human beings assimilate things through intuitive knowledge. An afterword, "The Morality of Literary Interpretation," surveys critically a range of hermeneutic theories and formulates a position that accords the literary text both autonomy and mystery.
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educator language professional
Greene, Thomas McLernon was born on May 17, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of George Durgin and Elizabeth (McLernon) Greene.
Bachelor, Yale University, 1949; Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1955; student, University Paris, 1949-1951.
Member faculty, Yale University, New Haven, 1954-1996;
Professor of English and comparative literature, Yale University, New Haven, 1966-1996;
chairman directed studies program, Yale University, New Haven, 1965-1968;
department chairman comparative literature, Yale University, New Haven, 1972-1978, 86-88;
chairman Renaissance studies program, Yale University, New Haven, 1980-1985;
Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of English and comparative literature, Yale University, since 1978. Visiting professor School Criticism and Theory Dartmouth U., Hanover, N.H., 1988, College de France, 1989. Visiting Mellon professor Institute for Advanced Study,1994-1995.
Teacher National Endowment for Humanities summer seminar, 1982, National Endowment for Humanities Summer Institute, 1991. Founder, executive director The Open End Theater, since 1996.
(Based on four Nielson Lectures delivered at Smith College...)
(-- Manchester Evening News)
With Army of the United States, 1945-1947. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member Modern Language Association (executive council 1987-1990, James Russell Lowell prize 1983), Renaissance Society of America (vice president 1981-1982, president 1982-1983, Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement award 1999), American Comparative Literature Association (vice president 1980-1983, president 1983-1986, member advisory board 1971-1977, Harry Levin prize 1983), International Comparative Literature Association (vice president 1991-1994).
Married Liliane Massarano, May 20, 1950. Children: Philip James, Christopher George, Francis Richard.