Yale Bulletin and Calendar

January 18, 2002Volume 30, Number 15Two-Week Issue


Louis L. Martz

English Professor Louis Martz:
'One of Yale's great teachers'

Louis L. Martz, a popular English professor at Yale for more than four decades whose scholarly interests ranged from English Renaissance literature to the works of St. Thomas More to modern fiction, died Dec. 18 at the age of 88.

A memorial service will be held at a later date for Mr. Martz, who was Sterling Professor Emeritus of English.

During his long tenure at the University, Professor Martz had also served as acting director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (1972-1978) and as acting director of the Yale Center for British Art (1981).

"Louis L. Martz was one of the most distinguished figures in the Yale English department during what many would call the 'glory days' of the 1950s to the 1970s," says his friend and former colleague Dwight Culler, professor emeritus of English. "Along with Cleanth Brooks, Maynard Mack and a few others, he moved the English department from a purely historical study of literature through the 'New Criticism' to a broader humanistic and religious concern.

"As a scholar, his greatest impact was on the study of 17th-century metaphysical poetry through his book 'The Poetry of Meditation' (1954), which proved that the structure of these poems was deeply influenced by popular handbooks of religious devotion," Culler continues. "In later years, Professor Martz supplemented his work in 17th-century poetry with the study of 20th-century authors, particularly Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Hilda Doolittle and D.H. Lawrence. Because of his deep love of literature, which breathed through his work, and because of the warmth and friendliness of his personality, he was one of Yale's great teachers."

Professor Martz's publications included "The Paradise Within: Studies in Vaughan, Traherne, and Milton," "Poet of Exile: a Study of Milton's Poetry" and "Many Gods and Many Voices: the Role of the Prophet in English and American Modernism." He edited "H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886-1961. Collected Poems, 1912-1944."

For 34 years, from 1963 to 1997, Professor Martz was chair of the 16-volume edition of "The Complete Works of St. Thomas More," published by Yale University Press. He edited some of those volumes.

Born in Berwick, Pennsylvania, in 1913, Professor Martz earned his B.A. from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1936 and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1939. While in graduate school, he received the Donald Grant Mitchell Fellowship, the highest award given for research and study in English at Yale. He joined the Yale faculty in 1939 and was named the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English in 1957. He became a Sterling Professor of English in 1971.

Professor Martz chaired the Department of English 1956-1962 and again in 1964-1965. He was director of Yale's Division of the Humanities 1959-1962 and again in 1980. He served as acting master of Saybrook College 1978-1979, and was an active fellow at the college throughout his Yale career.

Professor Martz served on a number of University committees, including the nine-member Hall Committee, which recommended the creation of a system of experimental undergraduate courses not tied to the traditional academic departments. These courses, taught by noted public figures from outside the University and varying from year to year, became known as the Residential College Seminars. Professor Martz headed the program from its first full year in 1969 until 1971.

"Louis Martz was, above all, a scholar of unparalleled versatility," says Fred Robinson, the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English. "He was an eminent authority in English literature of the Renaissance and the 18th century, in 20th-century poetry and in the fiction of D.H. Lawrence and Iris Murdoch. His tenure as director of both the Beinecke Library and the Yale Center for British Art attest to comparable versatility as a Yale colleague."

Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead, one of Martz's former students, also praised the professor's wide-ranging scholarly interests and administrative abilities.

"Louis Martz was one of the seminal scholars of 17th-century poetry, but his interests reached far beyond his nominal field," says Brodhead. "He was as passionate about D.H. Lawrence and H.D. as he was about Milton and John Donne, and he welcomed the work of many 20th-century poets when their work was still brand new. Besides his legacy as a teacher and scholar, his breadth of interest and steady good sense made him the person to turn to for any job in the Humanities that needed doing. He had a great career."

After his retirement from Yale in 1984, Professor Martz taught courses at several institutions, including Emory and Georgetown universities.

Professor Martz's honors include the Christian Gauss Prize, given annually for "the best book of literary scholarship published by an American university press," which was awarded in 1955 for "The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century." In 1985 he was presented the William Clyde DeVane Medal, an annual awarded conferred by the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for distinguished scholarship and teaching. Professor Martz was also awarded several honorary degrees. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a member of the Modern Language Association, Phi Beta Kappa and Yale's Elizabethan Club.

Professor Martz was predeceased by his first wife, Edwine Montague Martz, and by a son, Robert Stuart Martz. He is survived by his second wife, Barbara L. Stuart; three sons, Frederick Montague Martz, director of library systems at the Yale University Library, Louis Montague Martz and Andrew Stuart Martz; and two daughters, Ruth Anne Martz and Olivia Stuart Martz.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Yale University Library, P.O. Box 208240, New Haven, CT 06520-8240.

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