C. A. Patrides

.

Constantinos Apostolos Patrides (1930 – September 23, 1986) was a Greek–American academic and writer, and "one of the greatest scholars of Renaissance literature of his generation."[1] His books list the name C. A. Patrides; his Christian name "Constantinos" was shortened to the familiar "Dinos" and "Dean" by friends.

Early life: "Young in yeares, but in sage counsell old"
Greek Resistance
Triple Occupation of Greece.png
Triple Occupation of Greece by the Axis (1941-44)
Date 1941–1944
Location Greece
Belligerents
Resistance Forces:
EAM/ELAS
EDES/EOEA
EKKA/5/42 Evzone Regiment
Special Operations Executive
Other Occupying Forces:
Germany
Italy
Bulgaria
Hellenic State (1941–1944)

Patrides was born to Greek parents in New York City and grew up there and in Greece. During World War II, he carried messages[2] for the Greek resistance against the German occupation; for this service, he received the Order of Unknown Heroes medal from the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.[1] The resistance was led by the Greek Communist Party, which he later regarded as a danger, when he identified himself as a "firm anti-Communist";[3] his anti-Communism was Christian and humanitarian, the same traditions which nourished his criticisms of conformity in Renaissance England or his own time. He would later come to forgive his students of the 1960s and 1970s for "their ignorance, their radical politics, and their atheism." He remained a faithful member of the Greek Orthodox Church.[4]
John Crowe Ransom (pictured) taught C.A.Patrides at Kenyon College.[5]

He studied with John Crowe Ransom and Charles M. Coffin at the English Department of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio;[6][7] years later, Patrides dedicated his Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem to the Christian memory of Ransom.[8] At Kenyon, under the supervision of James Holly Hanford, he wrote his senior thesis on Milton's place in the Christian tradition, beginning the central research project of the next fifteen years. Graduating in 1952, he served in the U.S. Army between 1952 and 1954, earning decorations during his service.[1]

He earned a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1957 under the supervision of Ethel Seaton,[7] continuing his work on Milton and the history of Christianity.[6] On the day of his thesis defence, Patrides posted 35 packages, each of which submitted an article to a scholarly journal.[4]
[edit] Academic positions

After Oxford, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, until 1964, successively instructor, assistant professor and associate professor.[1] Patrides was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960 to study English Literature;[9] his 1963 absence left no teacher for the graduate course on John Milton's literature, until a young Middle-English specialist, Stanley Fish, volunteered, and began his astonishing transformation from novice to expert.[10]

In 1964, Patrides moved to the new University of York in England where he was a founder member of the English Department[11] and "where he rose to a chair as Professor of English and Related Literature."[1] In 1978 he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he became the G. B. Harrison Distinguished Professor of English in 1981.
Achievements: "Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavour"

Patrides wrote many pioneering books and articles in his field which remain standard texts and he was also a masterful editor of classic English texts by Milton, Donne and Herbert.[1] His bibliography lists more than 125 published items, including 23 books.[7] Patrides's publications were called "a monument to the highest and most enduring standards of our profession. [...] In our time, certainly, no one has excelled his breadth and depth of learning, shaped throughout by superb critical judgment, " wrote Roland Frye.[12]

His knowledge of languages and literatures enabled him to place texts in their historical contexts. In particular, Patrides clarified Milton’s theology and its relation to Trinitarian and Arian Christologies, doing "more than the combined efforts of all the rest of us to clarify and settle that issue with full regard to its theological complexities and to the subtleties of the poetic expression", wrote Frye.[12] Of his contemporaries, he was the best at explaining and analyzing philosophical and historical issues, according to Summers and Pebworth; in their judgment, "Patrides's Olympian style remains distinctive, characterized not only by its mannered elegance of phrasing, but preeminently by a kind of sophisticated wit that incorporates playfulness and amusement even in the most serious of observations and that prevents even the most magisterial pronouncements from ever sounding pompous or self-important."[13] He was a prolific lecturer, nationally and internationally, and inspiring to his students.[1]

For the Milton Society of America, he gave the annual address in 1974 and was named the Honored Scholar of 1978.[14][12]At the University of Michigan, Patrides received the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 1982.[1]
Death and legacy: "And spake the truth of thee in glorious themes"

At the age of 56, C. A. Patrides, called "Dean" and "Dinos" by his friends,[15] died on September 23rd, 1986 at 7:45 a.m.[16]

Memorial services were held at the University of Michigan, Dearborn and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. At the next meeting of the Milton Society of America, 170 colleagues attended the eulogy by Roland Frye;[17] the Society's Milton Quarterly published the eulogy of Frye (1987) and personal memorials by two dear friends, Professors Summers (1987) and Campbell (1987).

The University of Michigan established the C. A. Patrides graduate fellowship, with an award made in 1987,[18] and established the C. A. Patrides Professorship of English in 1995.[19] From 2005–2006, the C. A. Patrides Collegiate Professor of English was George Bornstein,[20] a specialist in modernism.[21] The University of York hosts an annual Patrides Lecture.[11] Patrides's former student, Gordon Campbell of the University of Leicester, was appointed the editor of the fourth Everyman edition of the selected works of John Milton at the suggestion of Patrides; Campbell dedicated his edition to Patrides's memory.[22]

Selected works

Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford, 1966) ISBN 0208018212
The Grand Design of God: The Literary Form of the Christian View of History (Toronto, 1972) ISBN 0710074018
Premises and Motifs in Renaissance Thought and Literature (Princeton, 1982) ISBN 0691065055
Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem (Holt, Rinehart, 1961) LCCN 61005930
Milton's Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem new and revised edition, (University of Missouri, 1983) ISBN 0826204120
Figures in a Renaissance Context (University of Michigan, 1989) ISBN 0472101196
The Complete English Poems of John Donne (J.M. Dent, 1985) ISBN 0460100912
The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge, 1980) ISBN 052129942X
Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology (University of Utah, 1971) ISBN 0835743829
The Age of Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-century Literature (Manchester University, 1980) ISBN 0719007704
Approaches to Paradise Lost: The York Tercentenary Lectures (University of Toronto, 1968) ISBN 0802015778
Selected Prose by John Milton (University of Missouri, 1985) ISBN 0826204848
George Herbert: The Critical Heritage (Psychology Press, 1996) ISBN 0415134137
The English Poems of George Herbert (J.M. Dent, 1974) ISBN 0874715512

References
Notes

^ a b c d e f g h Bornstein (1986)
^ The Michigan Daily, 1986, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
^ Campbell (1987, p. 39)
^ a b Campbell (1987, p. 40)
^ Photo by C. Cameron Macauley.
^ a b Summers (1987, p. 38)
^ a b c Summers & Pebworth (1989, p. 1)
^ Patrides. Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem
^ Guggenheim Fellows Guggenheim Foundation website. Accessed 2011-10-29.
^ Fish (1994)
^ a b "Events" tab, "English and Related Literature" Department page University of York website. Accessed 2011-11-01. A 2011 announcement noted that recent Patrides Lecturers have included "Roy Porter, Patrick Collinson, Lisa Jardine, Peter Holland, Peter Stallybrass, Quentin Skinner, Stephen Orgel, Stanley Wells, and Anthony Grafton".
^ a b c Frye (1987, p. 37)
^ Summers & Pebworth (1989, p. 4)
^ Honored Scholars of the Milton Society of America
^ "Dean" and "Dinos", familiar forms of Constantinos, were used by friends in the U.S.A. and the U.K., respectively.
^ Summers (1987, p. 37)
^ Frye (1987, p. 33)
^ Curriculum Vitae: Jonathan Allison. University of Kentucky
^ Proceedings of the Board of Regents The University of Michigan July 1995 - June 1996. p.13
^ Proceedings of the Board of Regents (2005-2006). University of Michigan. Board of Regents. p.15
^ Conference in honor of George Bornstein, the C. A. Patrides Professor of English Language and Literature.
^ Campbell, Gordon, ed (1990). "Acknowledgments". John Milton: Complete English poems, Of education, Areopagitica. Everyman Library (Fourth ed.). J. M. Dent and Sons. p. ix. ISBN 0460860453.

Sources

Bornstein, George (1986), Memorial: Constantinos A. Patrides, University of Michigan Faculty History Project, Ann Arbor, retrieved 2011-10-29
Campbell, Gordon (1987). "Dinos Patrides: 1930–86". Milton Quarterly 21 (1): 39–40. doi:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1987.tb00707.x.
Fish, Stanley (1994). "Milton, Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour". There's no such thing as free speech ... and it's a good thing, too. Oxford University Press USA. p. 269. ISBN 0195093836, ISBN 978-0195093834.
Frye, Roland Mushat (1987). "In Memoriam: Constantine Apostolos Patrides, 1930–86". Milton Quarterly 21 (1): 33–37. doi:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1987.tb00704.x.
Summers, Claude J. (1987). "Remarks occasioned by the death of C. A. Patrides". Milton Quarterly 21 (1): 37–39. doi:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1987.tb00706.x.
Summers, Claude J.; Pebworth, Ted-Larry, eds. (1989), "Introduction", Figures in a Renaissance context, essays by C. A. Patrides, University of Michigan Press, pp. 1–5, ISBN 0472101196, ISBN 9780472101191

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