Marshall Professor of French

Marshall Chair of French Language and Literature
University of Glasgow
Incumbent
Michael Syrotinski[1]
since 8 January 2013
Precursor Marshall Chair of Modern Romance Languages
Formation 1917
Named for Robert Marshall
First holder Charles Martin
Website www.gla.ac.uk/french

The Marshall Chair of French Language and Literature is one of two established chairs in French at the University of Glasgow, the other being the Stevenson Chair which is not currently occupied. It was established in 1917 as the Marshall Chair of Modern Romance Language from a lectureship instituted in 1895, and had its title changed in 1966.[2]

Robert Marshall, after whom the Chair is named, owned the Grangehill Estate near Beith, Ayrshire, and left it to the University in his will to assist with the foundation of a chair in modern languages.[3] He died in 1912. His legacy was combined with that of James Clason-Harvie of Brownlie[4] and others to endow the existing lectureship, created as a Chair in 1917.[2]

Marshall Professors of French

In 1919, the Marshall Lecturer in French, Charles Martin, became the first Marshall Professor.[5] He was succeeded in 1937 by Alan Boase, a graduate of Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, and an authority on influential French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne. He was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour by the French government and in 1979 won the Prix du Rayonnement de la Langue Française, awarded by the Académie française.[6] Under his leadership, the department grew into one of the largest and most dynamic in Britain.[6] Boase retired in 1966 and died in 1982.

Boase was followed in 1966 by Austin Gill, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford who had previously been the British Council's Representative in North Africa and Director of the British Institute in Paris, and had been awarded a CBE in 1955.[7] Gill was a specialist in French literature of the 19th century and particularly the work of symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He retired from the Chair in 1971 to focus on this research, being succeeded by Henry Barnwell, and died in 1990.[7]

In 1980, Colin Smethurst was appointed to the Chair from the University of Liverpool.[8] He was made an Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques, the second of three grades of that Order. Smethurst retired in 1998 and Noël Peacock was appointed to the Chair, holding it until his own retirement in 2010.[9]

List of Professors

See also

List of Professorships at the University of Glasgow

References

  1. ↑ http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH24304&type=P
  2. 1 2 "Marshall Chair of French Language and Literature". University of Glasgow. 10 April 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  3. ↑ "Biography of Robert Marshall". University of Glasgow. 20 June 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  4. ↑ "Biography of James Clason-Harvie of Brownlie". University of Glasgow. 24 May 2007. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  5. ↑ "Biography of Charles Martin". University of Glasgow. 1 August 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  6. 1 2 "Biography of Alan Boase". University of Glasgow. 18 August 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  7. 1 2 "Biography of Austin Gill". University of Glasgow. 12 August 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  8. ↑ "Biography of Colin Smethurst". University of Glasgow. 20 August 2008. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
  9. ↑ "Professor Noël Peacock". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 14 May 2011.
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