IN MEMORIAM

Carleton W. Carroll
(1939-2016)

Carl Carroll was born in Rochester, New York, graduated in French Studies from The Ohio State University in 1962, and spent the academic year 1962-1963 as a Fulbright Scholar in France. In Mulhouse he met Paulette Flick, whom he married in the summer of 1963, just before he began a year of study and teaching at the University of Dijon. The young couple returned to the United States and settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where Carl began his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin (MA 1965, PhD in 1968). He was trained by Julian Earle Harris (1896-1988), a former student in Romance Philology (PhD 1930) of my mentor, Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Julian Harris was highly regarded as both a competent medievalist and as a pioneer in French pedagogy. Our ties with Tigner Holmes, however indirect for Carl, proved to be one of the bases for our long-standing friendship.

During those years, Paulette, whose command of English was impeccable, earned her MA in French in 1964, which later qualified her to teach French at Oregon State University and Willamette University and ultimately led to her career as a professional technical and literary translator. After seven years of full-time teaching at Wisconsin, which included a five-year stint as chair of the Department of French and Italian (1969-1974), Carl accepted a tenure-track position at Oregon State University in Corvallis (Assistant Professor of French, 1974-1978; Associate Professor, 1978-1994; Professor, 1994 until his retirement in 2001, just after which he was knighted Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques). Corvallis was to remain Carl’s and Paulette’s home for the rest of their lives.

Friendships in our profession tend to be nurtured at annual and triennial conferences. I frequently saw Carl at Kalamazoo, the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, meetings of the International Arthurian Society, the Courtly Literature Society, the Rencesvals Society, and elsewhere. I especially remember his presence at and participation in a “Franco-American Colloquium: Electronic Techniques and the Study of Medieval Language, Literature, and Culture” at Princeton University in March 1997, the International Courtly Literature conference at Vancouver, British Columbia, in late July and early August 1998, where Carl functioned as co-host and later co-editor of the acta with Barbara Altman (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), and an International Arthurian Society conference at Toulouse the following summer.

The practice of scholarship in the humanities is often a solitary enterprise, although it is useless unless its products are shared with others, but in the early 1990’s I worked for the first time as a member of a team along with Carl and other outstanding colleagues like him—Martha Asher, Jane Burns, Carol Chase, Bill Kibler, Bonnie Krueger, Norris Lacy, and Sam Rosenberg—in the vast undertaking of a translation into modern English of all Old French texts comprising the Lancelot-Grail cycle organized and directed by Lacy and financed by the NEH and other entities. Carl was a major leader and contributor (parts II and VI of the Prose Lancelot), and I was delighted when Carl and I were assigned to vet each other’s work. Our team frequently met together at conferences and gathered for meetings at Washington University as well as an international colloquium hosted by Bill Kibler, who edited the presentations later published by the University of Texas Press (1994). As for myself, both personally and professionally, the experience was a highlight, perhaps the highlight, of my scholarly career—thanks in large part to the ways in which Carl and I worked together and interacted with our colleagues. The first edition was published by Garland (1993-1996), revised texts were printed ay Cambridge by D.S. Brewer (2010).

By the appearance of the second edition, Paulette had been diagnosed with bone cancer, to which she succumbed on February 6, 2013. I never had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but we began corresponding by email during the year before her death. Her messages, whether in French or English, were consistently witty, cheerful, and profoundly moving. A topic we often discussed was my wife Nancy’s fight against a 19form of leukemia not unrelated to Paulette’s cancer which she had held at bay for twenty years thanks in part to ever more efficacious, and ever less stressful, chemotherapeutical treatments. As it happened, Paulette was the first to lose her battle, and, as from the very beginning, Carl had served her well to the end as a loving caretaker at home and away from home, doing his utmost to make her last months as comfortable and peaceful as possible. In this, as in so much else, Carl set a shining example for me.

Both Carl’s obituary in the Corvallis Gazette-Times (June 9, 2016) and Michelle Szkilnik’s thoughtful necrology in the Journal of the International Arthurian Society (vol. 4.1, 2016: 174-176) describe our friend as a meticulous scholar—and that he was indeed! In addition to his scholarly contributions already mentioned, his first major publication is an edition and translation into modern French of Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain in the excellent Appleton-Century-Crofts student series (1968), in collaboration with Jan Nelson and Douglas Kelly, followed by critical editions of Chrétien’s Eric et Enide (Garland, 1987), with an English translation by Bill Kibler, Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, translated in collaboration with Kibler (Penguin Classics, 1991), Olivier de La Marche, Le Chevalier délibéré, in collaboration with Lois Hawley Wilson (Tempe, AZ: 1999), and an edition and English translation of Jean de Brie’s Le Bon Berger (1379), also in collaboration with Lois Hawley Wilson (Tempe, AZ, 2012). In his last years, Carl strove diligently—even obsessively—to produce a revised edition of Erec et Enide, but death cut him short.

The two tributes to Carl cited above capture his essence as a “lover of word games, clever lyrics and word combinations, architecture, cats, nature, and food,” the latter of which Michelle Szkilnik most appropriately attributes to Paulette’s influence—to which I would add the Oregon coast, fine wine, and an occasional sip of good Kentucky bourbon.

Frater ave atque vale: Hail fellow well met, and farewell!

Rupert T. Pickens

Emeritus, University of Kentucky

HENDRIK VAN DER WERF
(1926-2015)

Born in the Netherlands, Hendrik van der Werf studied musicology at the Universiteit Nijmegen under Albert Smijers and choral conducting at the Utrechts Conservatorium. He then emigrated to the United States and was first employed by San Diego State University to teach music history and to conduct choirs. In 1961, he entered graduate school at Columbia University, completing the Ph.D. three years later with his dissertation, Chansons of the Trouvères: A Study in Rhythmic and Melodic Analysis. His professorial career as a musicologist was spent at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, New York, where he also served for a time as department chair. Upon retirement, he left behind Western New York winters to enjoy life in sunny Arizona.

Professor van der Werf’s contribution to scholarship remains a monument to his willingness–indeed, his eagerness–to challenge idées reçues and to propose alternative theories about how medieval music was composed and performed. Keenly aware of the complexities of song and its interpretations, he tirelessly examined the secular and sacred repertories for clues that the medieval era itself provided regarding rhythm and melody, performance practice, and audience reception. Both his training at first-rate institutions and his sensitivity to the intimate relationship between music and text served him well in this pursuit. Among his publications on the lyric tradition are The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères: A Study of the Melodies and their Relation to the Poems (1972), Trouvères-Melodien (1977-1979), The Extant Troubadour Melodies: Transcriptions and Essays for Performers and Scholars (1984), The Lyrics and Melodies of Adam de la Halle, of which he edited the melodies (1985), Contredit: the Songs Attributed to Andrieu Contredit d’Arras (1992), and “Jean Renart and Medieval Song” (1997).

Another of Professor van der Werf’s invaluable contributions concerns his unwavering interest in, and support of, younger scholars. I was definitely a beneficiary of his generosity, as he shared his knowledge time and time again without my even having to ask during the early years of my career. Many Eastman graduates remain indebted to him, as do 21others with whom he interacted while they were completing their dissertations and working toward becoming established professionals. I have fond memories of presenting at an ICLS session that he had organized for the 22d International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. Afterwards, he could barely contain his enthusiasm for how the session and related discussion had proceeded. Ever devoted to investigating the intricacies of early music and text, Hendrik continued his research up until just a short time before his death at the age of 88. We are all the richer for his efforts and insights. His refreshing approach to the courtly tradition leaves a legacy that some may equal, but few can surpass.

Beverly J. Evans

State University of New York
at Geneseo