Enid Welsford

Enid Welsford
Born	Enid Elder Hancock Welsford (1892-02-26)26 February 1892 Harrow on the Hill,England
Died	4 December 1981(1981-12-04)(aged 89) Cambridge,England
Resting place	Harrow
Language	English
Alma mater	University College, London;Newnham College, Cambridge
Notable works	The Fool: his Social and Literary History(1935)
Notable awards	Rose Mary Crawshay Prize(1928, 1967)

Enid Elder Hancock Welsford(26 February 1892,Harrow on the Hill– 4 December 1981,Cambridge) was an English literary scholar, a Fellow ofNewnham College, Cambridge,and twice winner of theRose Mary Crawshay Prize– in 1928 and 1967. She is best known for her bookThe Fool: his Social and Literary History,published in 1935.

Life

Enid Elder Hancock Welsford was born in 1892 to Mildred L. Hancock, an artist, and Joseph W. W. Welsford, a teacher atHarrow School.She attended Conamur School in Kent, then took her undergraduate degree atUniversity College, Londonin 1911. In 1914, she obtained first class degree with a distinction inOld EnglishfromNewnham College, Cambridge,where she was to remain for the rest of her career.

Her book of poemsThe Seagulls and other poems,published in 1904, was appreciated as the work of a prodigy.

Welsford was a practising Christian, a member of the Anglican Franciscans, and a member of the interdenominational Conference of University Teachers. Keen to promote and support women scholars, she co-founded and presided over theUniversity Women's Research Club.

After a stroke in 1978, Welsford struggled for several years. She died at her home in Cambridge, on 4 December 1981.

Career

Enid Welsford obtained a Marion Kennedy studentship at Newnham with which she studied comparative literature in Old English underH. M. Chadwick.Her researches continued till 1918, after which she switched to literature from later periods. She had also started teaching at Newnham College in 1916. She became a Fellow of the college in 1921 and a university lecturer in 1928, a position she kept till 1959. She also was a director of studies in archaeology and anthropology (1939–1952), as well as of moral sciences (1941–1952).

Welsford's first book,The Court Masqueappeared in 1927, and was well-received, winning the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize the following year.She examined the progress of themasqueand theantimasquein the history of English poetry, showing how the catholic Tudor court absorbed European influences, whose admixture formed the English masque. By the time ofBen Jonson,the chaos of the grotesques in theantimasqueswas circumscribed and in opposition to the main action of the court progress.

In 1935, Welsford's most celebrated bookThe Fool: his Social and Literary Historyappeared, subsequently translated into several languages.The fool or jester started in the East, she suggested, arriving in ancient Greece as joker before firmly ensconcing himself in Roman drama as a figure of fun. Though it was unclear how a mentally deficient person became an entertainer, especially during much of history when handicaps, both mental and physical, were derided, by the middle ages, a court jester was often well-treated and well-fed, and totemised as a mascot. The fool may rarely have become a high officer, but in Elizabethan and Stuart times, he was considered an abstraction, a generalised figure of chaos.The English fool, moreover, didn't evolve in isolation: the Fool in Shakespeare'sKing Learbears a strong resemblance to the medieval Frenchsot.Among other topics, she also traced the history of the English pantomime in relation to theHarlequinin the early eighteenth century, from its arrival with the Alard brothers atDrury Laneto the bigger extravaganzas that became the norm in competition with the Lincoln's Inn theatre.The Harlequin was an aerial demon, originally, leading a nocturnal procession called the Wild Hunt; over time, this cavalcade of forlorn souls lost its frightening quality and they became a set of jocose characters.The book was considered a definitive treatise on the subject, celebrated for its depth of insight.

After retirement, Welsford continued her researches. HerSalisbury Plain, a Study in the Development of Wordsworth's Mind and Art,published in 1966, won the Rose Mary Crayshaw Prize the next year.

Honours

Welsford twice received the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize of theBritish Academy.In 1979,The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford,a festschrift in her name was published.

Selected works

• Enid Welsford (1927).The Court Masque.
• Enid Welsford (1935).The Fool: his Social and Literary History.
• Enid Welsford (1966).Salisbury Plain, a Study in the Development of Wordsworth's Mind and Art.
• Edmond Spenser (1967). Enid Welsford (ed.).Fowre Hymnes, Epithalamion.

Bibliography

• Crispin, Philip (2014)."Aimé Césaire's Caribbean Crucible: La Tragédie Du Roi Christophe"(PDF).Présence Africaine.189(189): 353–366.doi:10.3917/presa.189.0353.JSTOR43617346.
• de Kay, Charles (1 October 1904)."Two Little Prodigies".The New York Times.
• Estermann, Barbara (2014). "Shelley's Antimasques of Life: Re-visioning 'The Triumph.'".ELH.81(4): 1193–1224.doi:10.1353/elh.2014.0048.JSTOR24477775.S2CID170303952.
• Hutchison, Percy (19 January 1936)."That Privileged Person, the Fool".The New York Times.
• Lovejoy, Bess (15 October 2016)."What Do The Scary Clows Want?".The New York Times.
• "Welsford, Enid Elder Hancock".Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(online ed.). Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62393.(Subscription orUK public library membershiprequired.)
• "The British Academy: Sir T. Arnold to deliver Schweich lectures".The Times.30 October 1928.
• "Harlequin and the Pantomime".The Times.17 December 1951.
• "British Academy Fellows".The Times.13 July 1967.
• "Miss E. E. H. Welsford, Obituary".The Times.10 December 1981.