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Dennis Howard Green
Born(1922-06-26)26 June 1922
Bournemouth,England
Died5 December 2008(2008-12-05)(aged 86)
Cambridge,England
Spouses
Dorothy Warren
​
​
(m.1947;div.1972)​
Margaret Parry
​
​
(m.1972; died 1997)​
Sarah Redpath
​
(m.2001)​
Children1
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisKonradsTrojanerkriegund GottfriedsTristan.Vorstudien zum Gotischen Stil in der Dichtung
Doctoral advisorFriedrich Ranke
Academic work
DisciplineGermanic philology
Sub-discipline
Institutions
  • University of Cambridge
Notable students
Main interests
Notable works

Dennis Howard GreenFBA(26 June 1922 – 5 December 2008) was an English philologist who wasSchröder Professor of Germanat theUniversity of Cambridge.He specialized inGermanic philology,particularly the study ofMedieval German literature,Germanic languagesandGermanic antiquity.Green was considered one of the world's leading authorities in these subjects, on which he was the author of numerous influential works.

Early life and education[edit]

Tristan and IsoldebyHerbert James Draper(1901). Green'sPh.D.thesis concerned the workTristan and Iseult.

Dennis Howard Green was born inBournemouth,England, on 26 June 1922, the son of Herbert Maurice Green and Agnes Edith Flemming.[1][2]Just beforeWorld War II,at the age of eighteen, Green enrolled atTrinity College, Cambridgeto studyGerman.[3]

During the war, Green temporarily abandoned his studies to serve in theRoyal Tank Regiment,where he rose to the rank of major and participated in theNormandy landings.During this time it is probable that he was a member of British intelligence. During the war, Green was once arrested for having spokenDutchwith a German accent, and in May 1945, he organised a military transport toHalleto enable him to acquire a complete set of Niemeyer medieval texts in exchange for rations. The discipline and order which Green became accustomed to in the military would become key characteristics of his future career.[4]

Returning to his studies at Cambridge after the war, Green gained hisB.A.at Cambridge in 1946.[1]He developed a strong scholarly interest inGermanic philologyandMedieval German literature.[5]Unable to conduct his future studies in war-ravaged Germany as he preferred, Green opted for theUniversity of Basel,where he gained hisPh.D.in 1949 under the supervision ofFriedrich Ranke.[1][6]Ranke, who had been dismissed and exiled by theNazis,was a known authority onGottfried von Strassburg'sTristan.Green's Ph.D. thesis was acomparativestudy of thestyleofKonrad von Würzburg'sDer trojanische Kriegand Gottfried'sTristan.[7]Along withFrederick Pickering,Green became one of a selected group of elite British Germanists with qualifications from leadingGerman-language universities.[6]

Early career[edit]

Green was Lecturer in German at theUniversity of St Andrewsfrom 1949 to 1950. He was elected to a Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1949, which he continued to hold for the rest of his life.[8]Green gained anM.A.at Cambridge in 1950, and was University Lecturer in German at Cambridge from 1950 to 1966.[1][6]

Apolyglot,Green spoke not onlyEnglishand German, but alsoPortuguese,Romanian,Chineseand other languages, and was thoroughly acquainted with medieval languages and literatures, bothGermanicandRomance.This enabled him to draw upon a wealth of sources for his works. From 1956 to 1979 Green was Chair of the Department of Other Languages at Cambridge. Apart from German, it covered a wide variety of languages, including Dutch, Portuguese,HungarianandGreek.[9]

Illuminated manuscript page ofParzival.Green was a known authority onParzivaland other pieces ofMedieval German literature.

Green'sThe Carolingian Lord(1965) was asemanticstudy of forms of address for sovereign authority inOld High German.[10]It drew upon a wide array of sources, includingOld Saxon,Old English,Gothic,Old NorseandLatin.[7]It established him as an international authority on medieval German studies. Aided by the widespread acclaim whichThe Carolingian Lordreceived, Green was from 1966 to 1979 Chair of Modern Languages at Cambridge.[10]

Schröder Professor of German[edit]

In 1979 Green was electedSchröder Professor of Germanat Cambridge, succeedingLeonard Wilson Forster.He ran his Department of German with a firm hand, but was known as a brilliant teacher for those who were able to keep up with his pace.[10]Among his more notable students wasDavid Yeandle.[5]

Combined with his duties at Cambridge, Green was a productive writer. In 1975, he published all of the twenty book reviews for theModern Language Review,which subsequently gave rise toLex Green,whereby the editors of this journal were limited to permitting the publication of three reviews per person a year.[11]

In hisApproaches to Wolfram von Eschenbach(1978), which he wrote with his colleagueLeslie Peter Johnson,andThe art of recognition in Wolfram's Parzival(1982), Green made a significant contribution to the study ofWolfram von Eschenbach'sParzival.[10][11]Parzivalwas one of Green's favourite works, and he made a point of reading it once a year.[12]HisIrony in the Medieval Romance(1979) examined a vast amount of textual and literary sources ofmedieval romancefrom a comparative perspective, and is considered a pioneering work.[10]

Green was one of few medieval Germanists who were thoroughly acquainted with both Medieval German andMedieval French literature,and eagerly studied the two from a comparative perspective. He notably analyzed Medieval German literature within the whole range of the Germanic languages, and in the context of theChristianization of the Germanic peoples.[13]Unlike many other Germanists, Green consistently wrote his monographs on Medieval German literature in English, which made them available to a broader audience.[12]

Retirement from Cambridge[edit]

Vendel Period(Germanic Iron Age) helmet at theSwedish Museum of National Antiquities.Researchingearly Germanic cultureandhistorywas one of Green's greatest scholarly interests.

Green retired from Cambridge in 1989, and was elected aFellow of the British Academythe same year.[8]He was succeeded byRoger Paulin.Green was along withArthur Thomas Hattothe only medieval Germanist who was a Fellow of the Academy, and became an influential figure there.[14]His retirement ushered in a wave of scholarly productivity. HisMedieval Listening and Reading(1994) examined orality and literacy inMedieval Europe.[10]

In 1998, Green returned to his scholarly roots by publishingLanguage and history in the early Germanic world.It examines major aspects of the culture of the earlyGermanic peoples,including the subjects ofreligion,law,kinship,warfareandkingship.Drawing upon the evidence from no less than twelve Germanic languages, it also examines contacts early Germanic peoples had with their non-Germanic neighbours, and their contacts withChristianity.[13]Intended for both a scholarly and general readership, it gained a wide audience.[10]

Green was a member of several learned societies, includingModern Humanities Research Associationand theInternational Association for Germanic Studies(IVG), of which he at one point served as Vice-President.[10]He was a founding member of an interdisciplinary group of scholars which met annually inSan Marinoto discuss the Germanic peoples and languages, and he edited a collection of essays by this group published in 2003.[5]

Green continued writing books and book reviews well into his 80s. Hismonographsfrom this time, such asThe Beginnings of Medieval Romance: fact and fiction 1150–1220(2002) andWomen Readers in the Middle Ages(2007), covered topics recently made relevant bycritical theory,such as reading, listening, orality, literacy and the role of women.[10][15]

Death and legacy[edit]

Picture ofTrinity College, Cambridge,with which Green was affiliated throughout his entire adult life.

Green died on 5 December 2008. His final monograph,Women and marriage in German medieval romance(2009), which he had completed a few weeks before his death, was published posthumously byCambridge University Press.At the time of his death, Green was working on a draft for a book on authorship in medieval literature.[10]

For more than half a century, Green was one of the most distinguished scholars of Cambridge, and he has been described as one of the last representatives of the so-called Cambridge tradition, dating back to the nineteenth century, in which the study of literature proceeded from philology and scholars of literature were thoroughly trained inhistorical linguistics.[9][16]Following the death of Green, there remained few, if any, scholars in theUnited Kingdomwith the broad competence inGermanic linguisticsand philology which he had.[13]He was largely responsible for making Cambridge the pre-eminent British institution on the study of Medieval German literature.[14]

After his death the D. H. Green Fund was established at the University of Cambridge "for the encouragement of medieval German studies".[17]

Personal life[edit]

Green married Dorothy Warren in 1947. They had one daughter, and divorced in 1972. On 17 November 1972 he married Margaret Parry, who died in 1997. In 2001 Green married Sarah Redpath.[8]A man of greatwanderlust,Green made many exotic journeys during his life, including travelling theSilk RoadandMachu Picchu.[6]

See also[edit]

Selected works[edit]

  • Green, D.H. (1965).The Carolingian lord: semantic studies on four Old High German words: balder, frô, truhtin, hêrro.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • ———— (1966).The Millstätter Exodus: a crusading epic.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Green, D.H.; Johnson, L.P (1978).Approaches to Wolfram von Eschenbach: five essays.Bern: Peter Lang.ISBN3261029080.
  • Green, D.H. (1979).Irony in the medieval romance.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521224586.
  • ———— (1982).The art of recognition in Wolfram's Parzival.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521245001.
  • ———— (1994).Medieval listening and reading: the primary reception of German literature 800-1300.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521444934.
  • ———— (1998).Language and history in the early Germanic world.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521471346.
  • ———— (2002).The beginnings of medieval romance: fact and fiction, 1150-1220.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521813999.
  • ———— (2007).Women readers in the Middle Ages.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN9780521879422.
  • ———— (2009).Women and marriage in German medieval romance.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN9780521513357.

References[edit]

  1. ^abcdContemporary Authors. 22 May 2001.
  2. ^Who's Who.
  3. ^Palmer 2009,p. 119.
  4. ^Paulin 2009,pp. 117–118.
  5. ^abcPalmer 2009,p. 120.
  6. ^abcdPaulin 2009,p. 118.
  7. ^abPalmer 2009,pp. 120–121.
  8. ^abcPaulin 2008.
  9. ^abPaulin 2009,p. 117.
  10. ^abcdefghijPaulin 2009,pp. 118–119.
  11. ^abPalmer 2009,p. 122.
  12. ^abPalmer 2009,p. 124.
  13. ^abcPalmer 2009,p. 123.
  14. ^abPalmer 2009,p. 125.
  15. ^Palmer 2009,pp. 123–124.
  16. ^Palmer 2009,p. 121.
  17. ^University of Cambridge 2021.

Sources[edit]

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