Walter Davis

Walter Davis, Professor Emeritus of English, passed away on December 2, 2006. Walter received his Ph.D. from Yale (1957) and his B.A. from Trinity College (1950). He came to Brown in 1983 and was a greatly respected scholar of English Renaissance literature. He wrote important books on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and on Renaissance prose fiction, and he published a scholarly edition of poetry and a critical biography of Thomas Campion. Walter was a much loved teacher known for his devotion to students.

Walter was an exceptionally successful teacher of poetry. He led generations of undergraduates across the historical gulf between postmodern America and early modern England. The language of British Renaissance poetry is difficult, and the intellectual world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can seem distant from the perspective of today's students. Walter persuaded students to tolerate that difference and inspired them to become engaged by the strange relevance of writing from the past. He began by situating Spenser, Milton, and Donne in a world radically unlike our own and then used their poetry to investigate the human qualities connecting them to us. Walter will remain with all of us fortunate enough to have known him.