For the architectural historian and former president of Vassar College, see Frances Fergusson.
Francis Fergusson (1904–1986) was a Harvard and Oxford-educated teacher and critic, a theorist of drama and mythology who wrote The Idea of a Theater, (Princeton, 1949) a book about drama. He contributed an introductory essay to S. H. Butcher’s 1961 translation of Aristotle’s Poetics.[1] His other works include Dante's Drama of the Mind: A Modern Reading of the Purgatorio, which includes his translations of many passages. In The Rarer Action (Rutgers, 1970), a volume in tribute to Francis Fergusson, the critic Allen Tate wrote: "The Idea of a Theater is a work comparable in range and depth with Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. There is no other work by an American critic of which this can be said."[2]: x
Born in New Mexico, he completed high school at The Ethical Culture School in New York City, where he befriended future physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.[3] The two later attended Harvard University together.[4] He then received a Rhodes Scholarship and studied briefly at Oxford University before traveling to France where he befriended Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company. Returning to New York City, he took acting classes with the Polish director Richard Boleslavski and wrote drama criticism for the Herald Tribune. In the early 1930s he founded the drama division of the then new Bennington College in southwestern Vermont. After nearly a decade at Bennington, he moved on to teach at Indiana University and then at Rutgers University, where he taught comparative literature. Among his students were poet Robert Pinsky[5] and fiction writer Alan Cheuse.[citation needed]
^Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics. Hill and Wang, January 1, 1961 ISBN 978-0809005277
^Fergusson, Francis (2018). Sallies of the Mind. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-3362-2. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
^ Interview of Herbert Smith by Charles Weiner on 1974 August 1, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, [1]
^Bird, K.; Sherwin, M.J. (2006). American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Random House Digital, Inc. p. 39. ISBN 978-0375726262.
^Downing, Ben and Kunitz, Daniel. "Robert Pinsky, The Art of Poetry No. 76" Paris Review (Fall 1997)
FrancisFergusson (1904–1986) was a Harvard and Oxford-educated teacher and critic, a theorist of drama and mythology who wrote The Idea of a Theater...
Coronation Street. Fergusson was born in the village of Woolley, near Wakefield, to Margaret (née Jackson) and FrancisFergusson, a civil engineer. They...
Joseph Leo Doob – mathematician Douglas Durst – real estate magnate FrancisFergusson – literary critic and writer Rita Gam – film actress Jim Gardner –...
drama and dramatic verse Well-made play Yakshagana Elam (1980, 98). FrancisFergusson writes that "a drama, as distinguished from a lyric, is not primarily...
painful'." The literal meaning of abhinaya is "to carry forwards". FrancisFergusson writes that "a drama, as distinguished from a lyric, is not primarily...
Oppenheimer Hans Bethe — Los Alamos physicist, Nobel laureate in physics FrancisFergusson — writer, friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer Robert Serber — physicist...
In his introduction to the S. H. Butcher translation of Poetics, FrancisFergusson describes hamartia as the inner quality that initiates, as in Dante's...
1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912). FrancisFergusson wrote In general the ritual had its agon, or sacred combat, between...
he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing. He was a student of FrancisFergusson and Paul Fussell at Rutgers and Yvor Winters at Stanford. Pinsky married...
social events which included his friends Eudora Welty, Joseph Frank, FrancisFergusson, and others. In London at the Mermaid Theatre Stephen Spender presided...
Dowling, Professor of English Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man FrancisFergusson, Professor of English, literary critic H. Bruce Franklin, John Cotton...
observatory. Subsequent superintendents Charles Montriou and Edward FrancisFergusson maintained contact with Ronalds and visited him at Kew for hands-on...
system), Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Anne Revere, Lenore Romney and FrancisFergusson. Hecht excelled at The Lab and was accepted into its Auxiliary Acting...
374–376. Retrieved 10 October 2008. Geoff Browne, 'Herring, Sir Edmund Francis (Ned) (1892–1982)' Archived 24 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Australian...
go on to exert a great influence on American acting. Future critic FrancisFergusson was also a student. Lenore LaFount started an acting career after...
Newcomb College Life and letters of Humphry Davy Italian Literature FrancisFergusson Rutgers University Biography of Dante Nicolas J. Perella University...
musician Peter Drucker: management guru and writer Paul Feeley: painter FrancisFergusson: French scholar and translator Vivian Fine: composer Claude Fredericks:...
specialized in literary criticism. His most influential teachers were FrancisFergusson and Paul Fussell. After getting his degree, he became a professional...
speeches or sermons of Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, John Wise, FrancisFergusson and Red Jacket, the Seneca orator. Both set and costumes subtly used...
such as John Malcolm Brinnin, Robert Penn Warren, Howard Moss, and FrancisFergusson; musicians and composers such as Wallingford Riegger. He was especially...
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