Old Spenser-at-Kalamazoo hands will remember Walter Davis as a benign
senior presence there in the early years, and may recall also that he
was the first recipient of the International Porlock Society's Lamb's
Tail Award. Stuart Hunter at that time owned a farm in Ontario with
80-odd sheep, and brought a docked tail to be presented for some
distinguished achievement none of us can now remember. The sheep it
came from was called Shakespeare, so it was offered to Walter as a
Lamb's Tail from Shakespeare. He received it with an appreciative
grin, and I later heard that he had had it mounted and kept it in his
study.
Roger Kuin
On 7-Dec-06, at 9:45 AM, Jane Hedley wrote:
> Thank you very much for this announcement. I'm glad to be
> prompted to think a little bit about Professor Davis and his work.
> He was a wonderfully lucid exponent of Elizabethan prose fiction:
> for me as a grad student in the late sixties and early seventies,
> his work was important both substantively and as a model of a
> scholarly voice that "spoke from the page." In person too he was
> affable, generous, at professional gatherings seemingly more
> interested in having a good conversation than in making a name for
> himself. When I call up an image of him, he is smiling.
>
> Jane Hedley
>
> At 08:47 AM 12/8/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>> Many on this list may wish to learn of the recent death of Walter
>> Davis, professor emeritus of English at Brown, and a loving
>> student of Sidney, Spenser, and renaisssance literature. Walter
>> died of heart failure December 2 after a long illness. Anyone who
>> wishes to reach his family should write to me at my Brown address:
>> [log in to unmask] A memorial service is anticipated in the
>> new year.
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