David J. DeLaura: 1931-2005 (2005)

Professor David J. DeLaura, long Board member of Nineteenth-Century Prose and one of truly outstanding scholars in field, died suddenly last April at age of 74. At English Departments of University of Texas (Austin) for decade and University of Pennsylvania for quarter-century he distinguished himself in several ways. He became noted as dedicated, award-winning teacher revered by his students, and at Pennsylvania served as departmental head, holder of Avalon Foundation Professorship and, remarkably, university Ombudsman. We personally remember him as man of great personal charisma, friend and advisor to fellow scholars, and man of wisdom and judgment. In following pages we shall not deal with his academic career or with, for example, his considerable services to profession Our editor has thought it altogether fitting that Nineteenth-Century Prose recall his publications in field so as to pay tribute to him as remarkable scholar he was. His writings touched on wide range of literary figures from Coleridge, to Hardy, and on to T.S. Eliot, but he gave special attention to studies of Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and John Ruskin. The number of his publications is impressive enough, over forty, but figure is of less moment than his central achievements. They include his splendid study Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England and major articles that flank it, some so multi-valent and thoroughly researched that they might readily have been monographs. His reviewing, too, would be thought remarkable in any age and discipline. Religion, it is not too much to say, was principal underlying interest of his investigations--religion as it was thought and written about by major prose writers of period. Himself Roman Catholic of non-conservative cast, he saw religious thought in writers he studied as informing, crucial, and interlinking force of their work. First and always, however, he was student with passion to learn and an equal passion to get things right. That was impulse behind his first scholarly publication, on Other 'Antigone.' Both translator for American stage and an editor of popular edition were implicated in distorting substance and hampering dramatic effect of Anouilh's version of Greek play. In his meticulous, thorough way Professor DeLaura made his argument in authoritative tone we were to become familiar with over next forty years. DeLaura first showed himself scholar of first rank in 1969 when his lengthy and surprising article and appeared in PMLA. Though we knew of Carlyle's pervasive influence over younger man, we more readily recalled Arnold's dubbing him a moral desperado, who in preaching earnestness to an earnest nation was carrying coals to Newcastle. Then to Kathleen Tillotson's insight that Arnold had heeded the voice of Carlyle more than others thought, DeLaura brought an array of detailed proof of extent Arnold had heeded that voice. Over long career Arnold demonstrated a persistent ambivalence, one-half of it remarkable bulk of conscious and half-conscious borrowing of ideas and key expressions, other half something very close to concealment of his influence. A classic, said Ruth apRoberts of essay, and it deservedly won first William Riley Parker prize as best essay of year. Though two other articles and reviews of four books were also published in 1969, DeLaura turned to larger study. Again, same amassing of close detail, skill in spotting connections, echoes, and adumbrations sometimes decades apart, and an ear for nuance and awareness of contexts were all deployed in his most ambitious undertaking. In it, he traced interconnected beatings of three major figures, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater. Against background of rising utilitarian values and scientific humanism, all three figures had sought, in their different but connected ways, to adapt traditional religious culture to needs of later nineteenth century. …