Hugh Kenner
Encyclopedia
William Hugh Kenner was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.

Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario
Peterborough, Ontario
Peterborough is a city on the Otonabee River in southern Ontario, Canada, 125 kilometres northeast of Toronto. The population of the City of Peterborough was 74,898 as of the 2006 census, while the census metropolitan area has a population of 121,428 as of a 2009 estimate. It presently ranks...

 on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

. Kenner attributed his interest in literature to his poor hearing, caused by a bout of influenza during his childhood.

Attending the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

, Kenner studied under Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...

, who wrote the introduction to Kenner's first book Paradox in Chesterton, about G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

's works. Kenner's second book, The Poetry of Ezra Pound (1951) was dedicated to McLuhan, who had introduced Kenner to Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 on June 4, 1948, during Pound's incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital
St. Elizabeths Hospital
St. Elizabeths Hospital is a psychiatric hospital operated by the District of Columbia Department of Mental Health. It was the first large-scale, federally-run psychiatric hospital in the United States. Housing several thousand patients at its peak, St. Elizabeths had a fully functioning...

, 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....

, where Kenner and McLuhan had driven as a detour from their trip from Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 to New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...

. (Pound, who became a friend of Kenner's, had suggested the book be titled The Rose in the Steel Dust.) Later, Kenner said of McLuhan, "I had the advantage of being exposed to Marshall when he was at his most creative, and then of getting to the far end of the continent shortly afterward, when he couldn't get me on the phone all the time. He could be awfully controlling."

In 1950, Kenner earned a Ph.D. from Yale University
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...

, with a dissertation on James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, James Joyce: Critique in Progress, for Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth 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...

. This work, which won the John Addison Porter Prize at Yale, became Dublin's Joyce in 1956. His first teaching post was at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

 (1951 to 1973); he then taught at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 (from 1973 to 1990) and the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...

 (from 1990 to 1999).

Kenner played an influential role in raising Ezra Pound's profile among critics and other readers of poetry. The publication of The Poetry of Ezra Pound in 1951 "was the beginning, and the catalyst, for a change in attitude toward Pound on the American literary and educational scenes." The Pound Era
The Pound Era
The Pound Era is a book by Hugh Kenner, published in 1971. It is considered by many to be Kenner's masterpiece, and is generally seen as a seminal text on not only Ezra Pound but Modernism in general...

, the product of years of scholarship and considered by many to be Kenner's masterpiece, was published in 1971. This work was responsible for enshrining Pound's reputation (damaged by his wartime activities) as one of the greatest Modernists
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

.

Though best known for his work on modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...

, Kenner's range of interests was wide. His books include an appreciation of Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

, an introduction to geodesic
Geodesic
In mathematics, a geodesic is a generalization of the notion of a "straight line" to "curved spaces". In the presence of a Riemannian metric, geodesics are defined to be the shortest path between points in the space...

 math, and a user's guide for the Heath/Zenith Z-100
Z-100 (computer)
The Z-100 computer was an early microcomputer made by Zenith Data Systems . It was a pre-assembled version of the Heathkit H-100, which left the final component assembly to early computer hobbyists.Z-100 Computers were early personal computer era alternatives to the hardware system that won the...

 computer; in his later years was a columnist for both Art & Antiques and Byte
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...

magazine. Kenner was also a contributor to National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

magazine and a friend of William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...



Kenner was married twice: his first wife, Mary Waite, died in 1964; the couple had three daughters and two sons. His second wife, whom he married in 1965, was Mary-Anne Bittner; they had a son and a daughter. Hugh Kenner died on November 24, 2003.

Selected bibliography

  • Paradox in Chesterton (1947)
  • The Poetry of Ezra Pound (New Directions, 1951
    1951 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Poet Cid Corman began Origin magazine in response to the failure of a magazine that Robert Creeley had planned. The magazine typically featured one writer per issue and ran, with breaks, until the...

    )
  • Wyndham Lewis
    Wyndham Lewis
    Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

    : A Critical Guidebook
    (1954
    1954 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Robert Creeley founds and edits the Black Mountain Review...

    )
  • Dublin's Joyce (Indiana University Press, 1956; rpt., Columbia University Press, 1987)
  • Gnomon: Essays in Contemporary Literature (1959)
  • The Art of Poetry (1959
    1959 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In the United States, "Those serious new Bohemians, the beatniks, occupied with reading their deliberately undisciplined, protesting verse in night clubs and hotel ballrooms, created more publicity...

    )
  • The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot
    T. S. Eliot
    Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

    (1959
    1959 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In the United States, "Those serious new Bohemians, the beatniks, occupied with reading their deliberately undisciplined, protesting verse in night clubs and hotel ballrooms, created more publicity...

    ; rev. ed, 1969
    1969 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* FIELD magazine founded at Oberlin College...

    )
  • Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

    : A Critical Study
    (Grove Press, 1961; rev. ed., 1968)
  • T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays (editor) (Prentice-Hall, 1962
    1962 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Writers in the Soviet Union this year were allowed to publish criticism of Joseph Stalin and were given more freedom generally, although many were severely criticized for doing so...

    )
  • The Stoic Comedians: Flaubert, Joyce, and Beckett (1962) (illustrated by Guy Davenport
    Guy Davenport
    Guy Mattison Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.-Life:...

    )
  • Seventeenth Century Poetry: The Schools of Donne & Jonson
    Jonson
    Jonson is a surname, and may refer to:* Ben Jonson , English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor* Gail Jonson , former medley and butterfly swimmer* Mattias Jonson , Swedish professional football player...

    (editor) (1964
    1964 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Among the many books of poetry published this year, Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead is greeted with particular acclaim...

    )
  • Studies in Change: A Book of the Short Story (editor) (1965)
  • The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy (Indiana University Press, 1968; The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) (illustrated by Guy Davenport)
  • The Pound Era
    The Pound Era
    The Pound Era is a book by Hugh Kenner, published in 1971. It is considered by many to be Kenner's masterpiece, and is generally seen as a seminal text on not only Ezra Pound but Modernism in general...

    (University of California Press, 1971
    1971 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...

    )
  • Bucky: A Guided Tour of Buckminster Fuller
    Buckminster Fuller
    Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....

    (William Morrow, 1973)
  • A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973)
  • A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975)
  • Geodesic
    Geodesic
    In mathematics, a geodesic is a generalization of the notion of a "straight line" to "curved spaces". In the presence of a Riemannian metric, geodesics are defined to be the shortest path between points in the space...

     Math and How to Use It
    (1976)
  • Joyce's Voices (University of California Press, 1978)
  • Ulysses (George Allen & Unwin, 1980; rev. ed., The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987)
  • The Mechanic Muse (Oxford University Press, 1987)
  • A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983)
  • A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers (1988)
  • Mazes: Essays (North Point Press, 1989)
  • Historical Fictions: Essays (University of Georgia Press, 1995)
  • Chuck Jones
    Chuck Jones
    Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

    : A Flurry of Drawings
    (1994)
  • The Elsewhere Community (2000)

External links

Hugh Kenner: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
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