American scholar, historian, writer
Morris Gilbert Bishop (April 15, 1893 – November 20, 1973) was an American scholar who wrote numerous books on Romance history, literature, and biography. His work also extended to North American exploration and beyond.
Orphaned at 12, he was brought up in New York state and Ontario, wrote and published precociously, and entered Cornell University in 1910. Other than from 1914 to 1921 and 1942 to 1945, Bishop remained at Cornell for his entire working life and into retirement, at the age of 77 even fending off a demonstrator with a ceremonial mace.
At its core Bishop's work covered Pascal, Petrarch, Ronsard, La Rochefoucauld, Cabeza de Vaca, and Champlain—embracing literature in Italian, Spanish, Latin, and particularly French. He also worked as a translator and anthologist. Bishop was concerned that his books should be lively and engaging yet be soundly based on fact; they were widely praised for achieving these goals, but were sometimes criticized for falling short.
Bishop was a prolific contributor of light verse and short prose pieces to the popular magazines of the day. His light verse was praised by fellow poets such as Richard Armour, David McCord, and Louis Untermeyer.
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Early life and education.
At the time of Morris Bishop's birth his father, Edwin Rubergall Bishop, a Canadian physician, was working at Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane in Willard, New York; Morris was actually born in the hospital. His mother, Bessie E. Gilbert, died two years later, and Morris and his elder brother Edwin were sent to live with their Canadian grandparents in Brantford, Ontario. His father remarried, and while he was working in Geneva, New York, the boys were sent to live with father and stepmother. Morris was then aged eight. Both father and stepmother died (from tuberculosis) by the time he was 11, so the brothers were sent to live with their mother's family in Yonkers, New York.21
Bishop started writing young: his earliest known publication was in "St. Nicholas", when he was 10. He graduated from Yonkers High School in 1910.
Bishop attended Cornell University from 1910 to 1913, earning an A.B. degree, and also Cornell's Morrison Poetry Prize in 1913 (for a poem Bishop later called "hellishly serious") and an A.M. degree in 1914. After that he sold textbooks for Ginn &amp; Co, joined the US Cavalry (and unhappily served under Pershing in the "punitive expedition" in Mexico), was a first lieutenant in the US Infantry in World War I and a member of the American Relief Administration mission to Finland in 1919, and worked as a copywriter in a New York advertising agency, the Harry Porter Company, for a year. He returned to Cornell to begin teaching French and Italian in 1921 and to earn a PhD in 1926; his thesis was on the plays of Jules Lemaître.6 He was associated with Cornell for the whole of his adult life—not only as an alumnus but as an academic (in 1938 being named Kappa Alpha Professor of Romance Literature) and University Historian.
Career.
Bishop worked for the US Office of War Information in New York and London from 1942 to 1944, and with the SHAEF Psychological Warfare Division from 1944 to 1945.
After the war Bishop returned to Cornell. In 1962 he wrote "A History of Cornell", its standard history. The same year he was presented with a festschrift, "Studies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature", described in a review as questioning the notion of the "baroque" but showing "a continuing vitality" in its study.
Bishop was a visiting professor at the University of Athens (with a Fulbright teaching fellowship) in 1951, at Wells College from 1962 to 1963, and at Rice University in spring 1966. In 1964, he was president of the Modern Language Association.
After retirement from Cornell in 1960, Bishop served as its marshal, officiating at graduations. During the 1970 ceremony (when he was 77), he used the university mace to fend off a graduate who was trying to seize the microphone. "The jab was given in typical Bishop style: with spontaneity, grace and effectiveness," commented the president, Dale R. Corson.
Writings and scholarship.
"[Bishop's] scholarly forte was biography": he wrote biographies of Pascal, Petrarch, Ronsard, La Rochefoucauld, Cabeza de Vaca, Champlain, and St. Francis. Bishop was aware that academic biographies made only a minor impact, and instead wrote for a wide readership: speaking to an audience of writers, he suggested that would-be biographers consider writing "biofiction", which "may be more bio than fiction, or more fiction than bio", but either way "is based solidly on fact", though permitting "a good deal of invention, a good deal of decoration".
His "Survey of French Literature", first published in 1955, was for many years a standard textbook (revised editions were published in 1965 and, posthumously, in 2005). During the late 1950s and early 1960s his reviews of books on historical topics often appeared in "The New York Times". As of 2023[ [update]], his 1968 history of the Middle Ages is still in print. He was a frequent contributor of historical articles to "American Heritage" and also wrote a miscellany of lighter material, including the pseudonymous comic mystery "The Widening Stain" and humorous verse and prose pieces published by a variety of magazines. His entry in "American National Biography" reads:
Bishop's more than 400 publications are noteworthy not only by reason of their volume and their varied subject matter but also because of their charming style and formidable erudition. Bishop was fluent in German, French, Spanish, Swedish, modern Greek, and Latin; his command of the entire breadth of literature in the romance languages was exceptional. His scrupulous accuracy and keen insight gave substance not only to his core studies, those dealing with French language and civilization, but also to those in areas with which he was less familiar.
On working in those areas of relative unfamiliarity, Bishop said:
I get bored by doing the same thing over. No, it's not a question of being the "well-rounded" man, but I simply wish to satisfy my curiosity about one thing and then go on to another.S‑8
Bishop's papers are held at Cornell University Library's Special Collections.
Pascal.
The review of Bishop's book "Pascal: The Life of Genius" (1936) in the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" called it "the first complete description of Pascal as man and as historical figure to appear in English", and praised it highly, particularly for its lively description of the dispute between the Jesuits and Port-Royal. The "New York Times" review described it as "a solid, comprehensive and valuable addition to the library" with "a heroic attempt to explain the achievements of Pascal as a scientist, philosopher and theologian", and praised Bishop's enthusiasm in writing about Pascal.
The Romance studies scholar Arthur Livingston admired the book as a literary biography, particularly for the way in which Bishop "follows the motive of the 'child prodigy' through the varied influences of that fact in Pascal's life upon his temperament, his moral outlook and the various episodes of his career"—a viewpoint Livingston thought led to perceptiveness and fairness. But Livingston criticized what he saw as Bishop's unnecessary dalliance with "a rather timid Freudianism". He claimed that Pascal evolved "[from] a prig into a charlatan", that his learning is obsolete, and "It is in recovering Pascal the poet and artist from the dross of his biography and his thought that Professor Bishop's criticism is perhaps least effective". Yet Livingston concluded by praising the book as suggestive, comprehensive, and thorough.
The reviewer for "Isis" found that Bishop "succeeds in painting an objective as well as an enthusiastic picture"; for the reviewer for "The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science", "Dr. Bishop has written a scholarly and a brilliantly written book, one which every admirer of Pascal will read with pleasure." The review in "Philosophy" called the book an "altogether admirable biography", both critical and sympathetic; the reviewer for "The Journal of Philosophy" thought it should appeal to philosophers as "a well-organized collection of Pascaliana", commenting that "It is unfortunate that [Bishop's] stylistic exuberance sometimes gets the better of him, but for the most part he keeps it under control."
Bishop's "Blaise Pascal" (a 1966 mass-market paperback) followed a brief description of Pascal's life with a selection of his writings.
Invited to name the outstanding book of the period 1931 to 1961, Bishop named his own "Pascal: The Life of Genius", saying that its preparation had taught him much. "There is a useful lesson here: if you want to find out about something of which you know nothing, write a book about it."
Petrarch.
Reviewing "Love Rimes of Petrarch" (1932), Romeyn Berry enjoyed the opportunity Petrarch gave Bishop to write lyrical poetry: though unable to read the Italian, Berry thought it "safe to assume that in such a satisfying bit of metrical translation there must be much of both [Petrarch and Bishop]".
The review in "Saturday Review of Literature" of "Petrarch and His World" (1963) said that "Bishop's sometimes iconoclastic approach distinguishes his magnificent new biography of Petrarch from the hero-worshipping books about the poet". The review in "Italica" praised the book both as "a scholarly work cleverly concealed behind a sophisticated, witty, and often ironic prose", and for providing "a complete picture of Petrarch's long life, the many aspects of his character, and a scholarly analysis of the wide range of his writings". That in "The Historian" noted that half of the book was derived from a series of lectures ("the Patten Lectures at Indiana University during the Spring of 1962"), resulting in a style more conversational than would normally be expected: in general a plus, but occasionally to jarring effect. The Shakespeare scholar M. C. Bradbrook found the biography "engaging". The reviewer for the "Canadian Journal of History" described the book as "a gracefully written, very readable biography". In places its inferences are debatable, he added, but "some of Bishop's judgements are devastatingly perceptive". He concluded, "In Bishop's hands, Petrarch should come alive for all readers." The review in "Renaissance News" praised Bishop for "[having] managed to find a human being at the heart of [the superabundance of Petrarch's life] and to treat him kindly as well as sanely", and praised the book for its informativeness and interest and the gracefulness of its translations. "The New York Times"' regular book reviewer Orville Prescott described the book as "scholarly and yet lively" with "many smoothly flowing translations", yet suggested that it might be found too long to be read cover to cover. The reviewer for "Speculum" conceded that the book had some brilliant ingredients but compared it unfavourably with one by the Petrarch specialist Ernest H. Wilkins, which was more painstaking, "equally vivid and even more so", and "emerges with something solid"; whereas Bishop failed to provide a coherent picture of Petrarch or even to give the impression that he possessed one.
Bishop translated Petrarch's letters (selected from both the "Familiares" and the "Seniles", and elsewhere) from Latin for "Letters from Petrarch" (1966). Mark Musa, a scholar of Italian literature, thought it an "elegant" translation—one that "captured the spirit and tone of the poet's Latin letters". The review for "Renaissance Quarterly", whose author estimated that the content represented "about one tenth" of Petrarch's surviving letters, started:
This is a book for students of comparative literature who do not read Latin (if there are any). It is also for the undergraduate member of Renaissance literature or Renaissance history courses. It is most definitely for the general reader, who will probably not read it.
The review continued by saying that Bishop's book complemented James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe's "Petrarch the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters" (1898), the latter remaining "most valuable" despite its stilted translations. The review for "The Modern Language Journal" ("MLJ") regretted abridgements and liberties with the translations, but concluded by praising the book as "a worthy effort to bring material not easily accessible to the attention of the cultured laymen for whom it is intended. The translation is eminently readable and is distinguished by the elegance which we have come to expect of Professor Bishop. . . ." The reviews in both the "Renaissance Quarterly" and "MLJ" noted that the letters seemed to have been selected to fit Bishop's interests, or those of the educated lay reader, rather than to represent a more rounded picture of Petrarch's concerns.
Ronsard.
In a review of Bishop's "Ronsard: Prince of Poets" (1940), the French literature scholar Justin O'Brien pointed out that this book—a combination of