Bernard Knox
Encyclopedia
Bernard MacGregor Walker Knox (November 24, 1914 – July 22, 2010) was an English
classicist, author, and critic who became an American
citizen. He was the first director of the Center for Hellenic Studies
. In 1992 the National Endowment for the Humanities
selected Knox for the Jefferson Lecture
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
.
, Yorkshire
, England
. He received his B.A. from St John's College, Cambridge
in 1936, joined and was wounded in combat with the International Brigades
in the Spanish Civil War
, and served in the United States Army
during World War II
. In 1939 he married an American, Betty Baur, a novelist who wrote under the pen name Bianca van Orden; she died in 2006. His son, Macgregor Knox
, is a prominent historian of 20th century Europe.
Bored with his first Army assignment with an anti-aircraft battery in England, Knox volunteered for work with the Office of Strategic Services
as he spoke French and some German. The OSS assigned him to the Jedburgh
program, and he parachuted into Brittany
on July 7, 1944 with team GILES. His team evaded German capture while working with the area resistance, arranging clandestine air parachute drops of weapons, and when the regulars arrived did liaison work between the US forces and the French resistance
in order to sweep the German Army out of Brittany. In the Spring of 1945, he deployed to Italy
with an OSS team to work with the Italian Partisans
scouting for Allied forces. It was here, during a firefight where he was pinned down in a monastery filled with books that he resolved to take up his studies in the classics should he survive the war. He did so and received an M.A. from Harvard
, and a Ph.D. from Yale
.
Knox taught at Yale until 1961, when he was appointed the first director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.
After fulfilling a previous commitment to spend a year as Sather Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley
, Knox served as director of the Center from 1962 until his retirement in 1985. He continued to write prolifically.
Knox is known for his efforts to make classics more accessible to the public. In 1959 his translations of Oedipus the King
were used to produce a series of television films for Encyclopedia Britannica and the Massachusetts Council for the Humanities, featuring the cast of the Canadian Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He taught the poet Robert Fagles
at Yale, and became Fagles's lifelong friend and the author of the introductions and notes for Fagles's translations of Sophocles
's three Theban plays, Homer
's Iliad
and Odyssey
, and Virgil
's Aeneid
. Reviewing the Fagles Iliad in The New York Times
, classicist Oliver Taplin
described Knox's 60-page introduction as "His Master's Voice, taking the best of contemporary scholarship and giving it special point and vividness, as only Mr. Knox can." His combat experiences in World War II subtly inform these introductions.
Knox was the editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature and also wrote extensively for The New York Review of Books
. Knox received the 1977 George Jean Nathan
Award for Dramatic Criticism for one of his New York Review pieces, a review of Andrei Şerban
's controversial Lincoln Center production of Agamemnon; the award committee described Knox's work as "a brilliant review of a major theatrical event" in which Knox "recognized that the director was attempting to solve the central problem of this play by finding a new way to express long passages of lyric language that have lost their immediacy for modern audiences."
Knox is also known for his role in the controversy over similarities between Stephen Spender
's World Within World and David Leavitt
's While England Sleeps: it was Knox, reviewing Leavitt's book for The Washington Post
, who first pointed out its similarities to Spender's older memoir (which Knox had reviewed in 1951). This ultimately led to Spender suing Leavitt and forcing the withdrawal and revision of Leavitt's book.
The National Endowment for the Humanities
awarded Knox the Charles Frankel Prize in 1990, and in 1992 it selected Knox for the Jefferson Lecture
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
. Knox's lecture, which he gave the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males", became the basis for Knox's book of the same name, in which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical Greek culture to modern society.
He died of heart failure on July 22, 2010.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
classicist, author, and critic who became an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
citizen. He was the first director of the Center for Hellenic Studies
Center for Hellenic Studies
The Center for Hellenic Studies is a research institute for classics located in Washington, D.C. at 3100 NW Whitehaven Street. It is affiliated with Harvard University....
. In 1992 the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
selected Knox for the Jefferson Lecture
Jefferson Lecture
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
.
Biography
Knox was born in 1914 in the City of BradfordBradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He received his B.A. from St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
in 1936, joined and was wounded in combat with the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, and served in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. In 1939 he married an American, Betty Baur, a novelist who wrote under the pen name Bianca van Orden; she died in 2006. His son, Macgregor Knox
Macgregor Knox
MacGregor Knox is an American historian of 20th century Europe, and since 1994 has been the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He is the son of the British-born classical scholar and historian Bernard Knox and the novelist Bianca VanOrden.Knox was...
, is a prominent historian of 20th century Europe.
Bored with his first Army assignment with an anti-aircraft battery in England, Knox volunteered for work with the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
as he spoke French and some German. The OSS assigned him to the Jedburgh
Operation Jedburgh
Operation Jedburgh was a clandestine operation during World War II, in which personnel of the British Special Operations Executive, the U.S...
program, and he parachuted into Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
on July 7, 1944 with team GILES. His team evaded German capture while working with the area resistance, arranging clandestine air parachute drops of weapons, and when the regulars arrived did liaison work between the US forces and the French resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
in order to sweep the German Army out of Brittany. In the Spring of 1945, he deployed to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
with an OSS team to work with the Italian Partisans
Italian resistance movement
The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...
scouting for Allied forces. It was here, during a firefight where he was pinned down in a monastery filled with books that he resolved to take up his studies in the classics should he survive the war. He did so and received an M.A. from Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and a Ph.D. from Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
.
Knox taught at Yale until 1961, when he was appointed the first director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
After fulfilling a previous commitment to spend a year as Sather Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, Knox served as director of the Center from 1962 until his retirement in 1985. He continued to write prolifically.
Knox is known for his efforts to make classics more accessible to the public. In 1959 his translations of Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King , also known by the Latin title Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 BCE. It was the second of Sophocles's three Theban plays to be produced, but it comes first in the internal chronology, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone...
were used to produce a series of television films for Encyclopedia Britannica and the Massachusetts Council for the Humanities, featuring the cast of the Canadian Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He taught the poet Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles was an American professor, poet, and academic, best known for his many translations of ancient Greek classics, especially his acclaimed translations of the epic poems of Homer...
at Yale, and became Fagles's lifelong friend and the author of the introductions and notes for Fagles's translations of Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
's three Theban plays, Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
, and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
. Reviewing the Fagles Iliad in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, classicist Oliver Taplin
Oliver Taplin
Professor Oliver Taplin was a fellow and tutor of Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford. He holds a DPhil from Oxford University....
described Knox's 60-page introduction as "His Master's Voice, taking the best of contemporary scholarship and giving it special point and vividness, as only Mr. Knox can." His combat experiences in World War II subtly inform these introductions.
Knox was the editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature and also wrote extensively for The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. Knox received the 1977 George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...
Award for Dramatic Criticism for one of his New York Review pieces, a review of Andrei Şerban
Andrei Serban
Andrei Șerban is a Romanian-born American theater director. A major name in twentieth-century theater, he is renowned for his innovative and iconoclastic interpretations and stagings...
's controversial Lincoln Center production of Agamemnon; the award committee described Knox's work as "a brilliant review of a major theatrical event" in which Knox "recognized that the director was attempting to solve the central problem of this play by finding a new way to express long passages of lyric language that have lost their immediacy for modern audiences."
Knox is also known for his role in the controversy over similarities between Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
's World Within World and David Leavitt
David Leavitt
David Leavitt is an American novelist.-Biography:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Leavitt is a graduate of Yale University. and a professor at the University of Florida...
's While England Sleeps: it was Knox, reviewing Leavitt's book for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, who first pointed out its similarities to Spender's older memoir (which Knox had reviewed in 1951). This ultimately led to Spender suing Leavitt and forcing the withdrawal and revision of Leavitt's book.
The National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
awarded Knox the Charles Frankel Prize in 1990, and in 1992 it selected Knox for the Jefferson Lecture
Jefferson Lecture
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. Knox's lecture, which he gave the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males", became the basis for Knox's book of the same name, in which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical Greek culture to modern society.
He died of heart failure on July 22, 2010.
Books
- Bernard Knox, Cleanth BrooksCleanth BrooksCleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
, Maynard Mack, Tragic Themes in Western Literature: Seven Essays by Bernard Knox and Others (Yale University Press, 1955), ISBN 9780300003284. - Bernard Knox, Oedipus at Thebes (Yale University Press, 1957), reissued as Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (Yale University Press, 1998), ISBN 9780585376370.
- Bernard Knox, The heroic temper: studies in Sophoclean tragedy (University of California Press, 1964), ISBN 9780520049574.
- Bernard Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979) (reprint, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), ISBN 9780801834097
- Bernard Knox, Essays Ancient and Modern (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), ISBN 9780801837890.
- Bernard Knox, editor, The Norton Book of Classical Literature (Norton, 1993), ISBN 9780393034264.
- Bernard Knox, The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics (1993) (reprint, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), ISBN 9780393312331.
- Bernard Knox, Backing Into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal (W.W. Norton, 1994), ISBN 9780393035957.
Selected introductions
- Sophocles, tr. Robert Fagles, notes by Bernard Knox, The three Theban plays (Viking Press, 1982), ISBN 9780670698059.
- Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox, The Iliad (Penguin Classics, 1991), ISBN 9780140445923.
- Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox, The Odyssey (Penguin Classics, 1997), ISBN 9780140268867.
- Virgil, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox, The Aeneid (Viking, 2006), ISBN 9780670038039.
- Moses I. Finley, intro. Bernard Knox, The World of Odysseus (New York Review of Books, 2002), ISBN 9781590170175.