Virginia James Tufte (August 19, 1918 – March 28, 2020) was a writer and distinguished emerita professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her special fields were Milton, Renaissance poetry, and the history and grammar of English.
Virginia James Tufte | |
|---|---|
| Born | Virginia James August 19, 1918 Meadow Grove, Nebraska |
| Died | March 28, 2020 Beverly Hills, California |
| Children | Edward Tufte |
| Academic background | |
| Education | A. B., University of Nebraska M. A., Arizona State University M. A. and Ph.D. University of California at Los Angeles |
Early life and education
editVirginia James was born in Meadow Grove, Nebraska,[1] one of the ten children of Micah Dickerson James and Sarah Elizabeth Bartee James. Both of her parents were from Virginia.[2] She attended Midland College and worked as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Nebraska State Journal as a young woman.[1][3]
After marriage, Tufte pursued further education, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1944,[4] a master's degree from Arizona State University, and master's and doctoral degrees in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.[5][6][7] Her 1964 dissertation was titled "Literary Backgrounds and Motifs of the Epithalamium in English to 1650".[8]
Career
editTufte was a member of the English faculty of the University of Southern California for 25 years, beginning in 1964, and retiring in 1989. At USC, she won teaching awards and was a co-founder of several interdisciplinary programs.[1] She was perhaps best known for Grammar as Style (1971), which developed a new following several decades after it had gone out of print,[9] prompting her to write its successor, Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style (2006).[10][11][12]
Besides her work on syntax and style, Tufte was notable for books and essays in two other areas of literary study and for a video biography. Her book The Poetry of Marriage: The Epithalamium in Europe and its Development in England (1970), a comprehensive history of the English epithalamium, grew from her doctoral research.[13] She also made studies of artists as interpreters of John Milton's poems.[14][15] Besides numerous essays and contributions to books in this field, some in collaboration with Wendy Furman-Adams of Whittier College,[16] she wrote and produced a one-hour video biography of a literary illustrator Reaching for Paradise: The Life and Art of Carlotta Petrina (1994) that has appeared on educational television stations, is archived in college and university libraries, and is in use in classrooms.[17]
Tufte's interest in life and family histories is reflected also in two collaborative books with anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, Changing Images of the Family (1981)[18] and Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling and Growing Older (1992).[19]
Personal life
editVirginia James married Edward E. Tufte in Omaha in 1940; her husband was city engineer and public works director of the city of Beverly Hills, California, for many years.[20] Their son is Edward Rolf Tufte, an expert in the field of information design, and active as a sculptor. Virginia James Tufte was widowed when her husband died in 1999; she died in 2020, aged 101 years, at her home in Beverly Hills.[1]
Bibliography
edit- Virginia James Tufte (2013). Pieces: Embroidered by Memory. Illustrated by Anna Lackaff. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
- Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press. 2006. ISBN 0-9613921-8-5.
- Reaching for Paradise: The Life and Art of Carlotta Petrina (video biography). Los Angeles. 1994.
- Virginia Tufte; Barbara Meyerhoff, eds. (March 1981). Changing Images of the Family. Yale Univ Press. ISBN 0-300-02671-4.
- Grammar as Style. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1971. ISBN 0-03-079615-6.
- Virginia Tufte; Garrett Stewart (1971). Grammar as Style: Exercises in Creativity. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0-03-085041-X.
- Virginia Tufte, ed. (1970). High Wedlock Then Be Honoured. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-37159-9.
- The Poetry of Marriage: The Epithalamium in Europe and its Development in England. University of Southern California Studies in Comparative Literature. 1970. ISBN 0-87252-012-9.
- Virginia Tufte; Joseph Aurbach; Philip H. Cook; Robert E. Kaplan (1968). Transformational Grammar: A Guide for Teachers. Washington Educational Research Associates.
References
edit- ^ a b c d Bell, Susan (September 11, 2020). "In Memoriam: Virginia Tufte". USC Dornsife News. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
- ^ "Eva Epp". The Norfolk Daily News. October 23, 2010. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
- ^ Tufte, Virginia (1944-06-18). "High School Musicians 'Reign' over N. U." The Nebraska State Journal. p. 23. Retrieved 2020-12-27 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "U. N. Grants 166 Degrees As First Semester Closes". Lincoln Nebraska State Journal. January 30, 1944. p. 6. Retrieved December 27, 2020 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
- ^ Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, Graphics Press, retrieved 2010-02-08
- ^ USC Experts Directory, University of Southern California, retrieved 2010-02-08
- ^ "Virginia Tufte". Nebraska Authors. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
- ^ Tufte, Virginia James. "Literary Backgrounds and Motifs of the Epithalamium in English to 1650" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1964). ProQuest document ID 302117430.
- ^ Moe, Peter Wayne (2018). "Virginia Tufte's Sentences". Style. 52 (4): 385–403. doi:10.5325/style.52.4.0385. ISSN 0039-4238. JSTOR 10.5325/style.52.4.0385.
- ^ David Jauss (October–November 2003), "What We Talk About When We Talk About Flow", The Writer's Chronicle, 36 (2): 12–16
- ^ David Jauss (2008). Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction. Writers Digest Books. pp. 68, 69. ISBN 978-1-58297-538-2.
- ^ Brooks Landon (2008). Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft. The Teaching Company. pp. 22, 86, 122, 132.
- ^ Heather Dubrow (1990). A Happier Eden: The Politics of Marriage in the Stuart Epithalamium. Cornell Univ Press. ISBN 0-8014-2296-5.
- ^ Furman-James, Wendy; Tufte, Virginia James (December 2001). "Anticipating Empson: Henry Fuseli's Re-Vision of Milton's God" (PDF). Milton Quarterly. 35 (4): 258–274. doi:10.1111/1094-348X.00024.
- ^ Galbraith M. Crump, ed. (1986). "Visualizing Paradise Lost: Classroom Use of Illustrations by Medina, Blake, and Doré". Approaches to Teaching Milton's Paradise Lost. The Modern Language Association of America.
- ^ Whittier College. "Wendy Furman-Adams". Retrieved 2010-02-10.
- ^ Wendy Furman-Adams. "Reaching For Paradise: John Milton (1608-1674), Milton Illustration, and Carlotta Petrina (1901-1997)". Retrieved 2010-02-11.
- ^ Changing images of the family. Tufte, Virginia., Myerhoff, Barbara G. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1979. ISBN 0-300-02361-8. OCLC 4638889.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Myerhoff, Barbara G.; Kaminsky, Marc (1992). Remembered lives: the work of ritual, storytelling, and growing older. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-08177-6.
- ^ American Society of Civil Engineers. "Tufte, Edward E.; ASCE Fellow". Retrieved 2010-02-10.