IN MEMORIAM

Robert L. Montgomery

Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus

UC Irvine
1927 - 2013

Professor Emeritus Robert L. Montgomery died on February 26, 2013 in his 86th year, peacefully and at home. His full-time career at Irvine had spanned 27 years, but he remained active in research for more than a decade after his retirement in 1994.

 

He was a great-grandson of General Grenville Dodge, who fought for the Union in the Civil War, was a civil engineer and a leading figure in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and served in the House of Representatives representing Iowa’s fifth congressional district. (Fort Dodge and Dodge City are named after him.)

 

Bob Montgomery was raised in Connecticut and graduated from St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire before serving in the Navy in World War II on the U.S.S. North Carolina. After the War, he attended Harvard, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1950. He married Peggy, who survives him, in 1951. He took up a Fulbright Fellowship in France in 1951-52 and returned to Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1956. Later awards included a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a resident fellowship at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation on Lake Como.

 

His first academic appointment was at the University of Texas, Austin, where he earned tenure in 1961. He was Visiting Professor of English at Williams College in 1966-67 and then came to the young UC Irvine campus in 1967, following Hazard Adams, who had briefly been his colleague at Austin and with whom, along with Hazard’s wife, Diana, Bob and Peggy formed a close friendship that lasted until Bob’s death.

 

His specialties encompassed English Renaissance Poetry; Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment Critical Theory; Shakespeare; and the History of Rhetoric, all of which made him an excellent fit for Irvine’s Department of English and Comparative Literature and its founders’ focus on literary and critical theory. His major books include Symmetry and Sense: The Poetry of Sir Philip Sidney (1961), The Reader’s Eye: Studies in Didactic Literary Theory from Dante to Tasso (1979), Terms of Response: Language and Audience in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Theory (1991), and The Perfect Ceremony of Love’s Rite: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint (2006). He also translated and contributed a long critical preface to Giacopo Mazzoni’s On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante (1983) and was co-editor of several other books. His numerous articles include, in addition to essays on his favorite subjects, Shakespeare and Sidney, pieces on George Herbert, William Caxton, Joseph Addison, and Evelyn Waugh, and many book reviews.

 

He held administrative and editorial posts while at Austin, and at Irvine he briefly served in the early ‘70s as Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs and Acting Dean of the School of Humanities.

 

One theme stands out above all others in the recollections of colleagues, friends, and former students, and that is the theme of friendship. As a former fellow Harvard undergraduate, fellow graduate student—and, much later, a colleague—puts it: “In a long life I haven’t met anyone with a better gift for friendship. He was wise, kind, sensitive, open, and loyal and he was enormously entertaining company, being intellectually lively, with strong opinions, likes, dislikes, quirks, and a lovely sense of humor.” Whether it was to a new colleague or student, Bob and Peggy were warmly welcoming—“Sweet and generous” as one younger colleague characterized Bob and Peggy, recalling her arrival some time after Bob’s retirement. And a former graduate student writes of his experience in the ‘80s and 90’s, “During the time I knew him, he seemed always to be surrounded by caring people—good friends, loyal students, and a truly interesting family of independent thinkers. He made us all feel better about ourselves—sometimes not an easy accomplishment.”

 

And in his house Bob was surrounded also by interesting things, for he had passions that ranged far beyond his scholarly ones. He and Peggy were avid fossil hunters and collectors and for many years made an annual visit to the gigantic gem and mineral fossil show in Tucson. They were as welcoming to ammonites and exotic mineral specimens as to graduate students. For their work with the Orange County Natural History Foundation, Bob and Peggy received Lauds & Laurels Community Service Awards from UCI’s Alumni Association in 1980.

 

In retirement Bob took up again photography, drawing, and painting. And throughout his life he experimented with short stories and poetry, delighting others and himself with a little tale written for a grandchild or a colleague’s daughter. A friend’s birthday always provided a good excuse for some fine doggerel.

 

He could put on a curmudgeonly manner, though it was seen through by those who knew him best as more often than not an affectation. Hazard Adams writes that he was “unfailingly friendly and courteous but not suffering fools gladly.” It may be added, however, that while he may not have suffered fools gladly, fools did give him a lot of pleasure after he had failed to suffer them. He laughed at them gladly and generously.

 

 

Robert Newsom

Professor of English, Emeritus