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Helen Vendler (née Hennessy; April 30, 1933 – April 23, 2024) was an American academic, writer and literary critic. She was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities.
Her academic focus was critical analysis of poetry and she studied poets from Shakespeare and George Herbert to modern poets such as Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney. Her technique was close reading, which she described as "reading from the point of view of a writer".
Vendler reviewed poetry regularly for periodicals including The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. She was also a regular judge for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize and so was influential in determining writers' reputation and success.
In 1954, Vendler was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for mathematics at the Université catholique de Louvain but, while traveling to the university, she decided that she would rather study English than math, and the Fulbright commission allowed her to switch her focus to literature. Upon returning to the U.S., Vendler took 12 undergraduate courses in English at Boston University in a year. In 1956, she enrolled at Harvard University as a graduate student in English. She recalled that the department's chair told her within a week of entry that "we don't want any women here", while Perry Miller refused to admit her to a seminar he led on Herman Melville despite viewing her as his "finest student". Other Harvard professors offered her more support, notably I. A. Richards. Vendler was offered a job teaching in Harvard's English department in 1959, making her the first woman the department offered a job as an instructor. She declined.
Vendler graduated with a Ph.D. in English and American literature the next year. She began teaching English at Cornell University in 1960, after her husband at the time, Zeno Vendler, moved to teach there. She left Cornell in 1963 and spent several years at various other institutions, including a year (1963–64) teaching at Haverford College and Swarthmore College, two years (1964–66) as an assistant professor at Boston University, and another two (1966–68) as full professor. Vendler spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Bordeaux. After that, she was Boston University's director of graduate studies in the English department from 1970 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1979.
Vendler was a professor of English at Harvard University from 1984 until her death; from 1981 to 1984 she taught alternating semesters at Harvard and Boston University.Joel A. Getz, "Vendler Accepts English Dept. Appointment," Harvard Crimson, December 10, 1984. She has said that she retained her affiliation with BU for several years to ensure that she wasn't "some little token person" at Harvard. In 1985, Vendler was named the William R. Kenan Professor of English and American Literature and Language. From 1987 to 1992, she served as associate dean of arts and sciences. In 1990, she was appointed the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor.Harvard Gazette, "Faust named University Professor" Harvard Gazette, December 17, 2018. In 1992, Vendler received an honorary Litt. D. from Bates College. She was a Charles Stewart Parnell fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1995, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene in 1997.
Vendler delivered the 2000 Warton Lecture on English Poetry. (See Wallace Stevens.) In 2004, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Jefferson Lecturers at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).Joshua D. Gottlieb, "Vendler Tapped for National Lecture," Harvard Crimson, March 12, 2004. Her lecture, "The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar",Helen Vendler, "The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar" , text of Jefferson Lecture at NEH website. used poems by Wallace StevensSee for example her remarks about Stevens's Harmonium and its various poems, such as Le Monocle de Mon Oncle and Bantam in Pine Woods to argue for the role of the arts (as opposed to history and philosophy) in the study of humanities.Sam Teller, "Vendler Advocates Larger Role for Arts in Academia," Harvard Crimson, March 15, 2005. In 2006, The New York Times called Vendler "the leading poetry critic in America" and credited her work with helping "establish or secure the reputations" of poets including Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, and Rita Dove.
Vendler wrote books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She was also a judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1974, 1976, 1978, 1986) and the National Book Award for Poetry (1972).
Vendler died at her home in Laguna Niguel, California, on April 23, 2024, at the age of 90.
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