MH Abrams

[rich]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/mh-abrams-beloved-professor-literary-scholar-dies-102

Abrams, who received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack
Obama last July, was the Class of 1916 Professor Emeritus of English. He
came to Cornell in 1945 as an assistant professor and retired in 1983.
Among his students over the years were literary critics Harold Bloom ’51
and E.D. Hirsch ’50 and novelist Thomas Pynchon ’59. Abrams was named the
F.J. Whiton Professor of English in 1960 and the Class of 1916 Professor in
1973.

Abrams conducted classified research at Harvard’s Psycho-Acoustics
Laboratory during World War II, helping the military solve problems in
voice communications by developing highly audible military codes and tests
to select personnel with the ability to recognize sounds in a noisy
background.

“The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing – by,
for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source
of the power and permanence of literature.”

amen to that

rich
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