Alan Martin Boase (/boʊz/, 23 June 1902 – 7 November 1982) was a British Romance studies and literary scholar of Scottish origin.,Marshall Professor of French at theUniversity of Glasgow. He was a specialist on theFrench Renaissance writerMichel de Montaigne, and the French metaphysical poetJean de Sponde.

Alan Martin Boase, was born on 23 June 1902 in Rathalpin, St. Andrews. His father was William Norman Boase C.B.E. (1870-1938), Provost at St. Andrews from 1927 to 1936, and President of the famousSt. Andrews golf club. His mother was the writer Mabel Margaret Boase. Alan Boase was educated atEton, then atNew College, Oxford before completing his doctoral studies atTrinity College, Cambridge and theSorbonne. In 1929, he was appointed to a lectureship atSheffield where he met his wife Grizelle Forster, daughter of the Professor of Classics at Sheffield, E. S. Forster (1879-1950).

In 1936, Boase was appointed chair of French atSouthampton, but returned to Scotland the following year asMarshall Professor of French at theUniversity of Glasgow where he remained until his retirement in 1966.

His initial specialism was in 16th and 17th century French literature, and in particularMontaigne andJean de Sponde. But he also keenly pursued interests outside his special field of The Renaissance, in education, drama, fine art, history, politics and contemporary writing.^[1] After retirement, he remained a committee chairman at theFrench Institute in Edinburgh. . He died in Edinburgh on 7 November 1982.

He was made an Officer of theLegion of Honour by the French government and in 1979 won thePrix du Rayonnement français, awarded by theAcadémie française.^[2] He became an honorary fellow of theCollège de France in 1974

• Montaigne,Selected Essays, Arthur Tilley & A. M. Boase (ed.) Manchester University Press, 1934.
• The Fortunes of Montaigne:A History of the Essays in France 1580-1669. London, Methuen, 1935.
• Jean Cocteau,La Machine infernale with a preface by Alan M. Boase, London, Nelson, 1944.
• Sponde,Sonnets et Stances de la Mort, introduction de Alan Boase, Paris, Corti, 1948.
• Sponde,Poésies. Texte établi par Alan Boase et François Ruchon. Avec une ‘Etude sur les poésies de Jean de Sponde’ par Alan Boase, Geneva, Cailler, 1949.
• Sponde,Méditations, avec un Essai de Poèmes chrétiens Introduction de Alan Boase, Paris, Corti, 1954 including a long section within the introduction, pp. xiii-xcix, on ‘La Vie de Sponde’
• The Poetry of France (4 volumes). London, Methuen 1964-1967

• “Then Malherbe came”,Criterion, X 1930–1931, pp. 287–306.
• “Interpretation ofLes Lettres persanes”, inThe French Mind. Studies in honour of Gustave Rudler, ed. Will Moore, Rhoda Sutherland and Enid Starkie, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952, pp. 152–69.
• “Tradition and Revaluation in the French Anthology, 1692-1960” inEssays presented to C. M. Girdlestone, University of Durham, 1960, pp. 51–63.
• “Leçons sur le ballet de cour”Neohelicon 7, 61–144 (1979) (based on invited lectures at the Collège de France on art and mythology in theballet de cour and its English counterparts)

• 1902 births
• 1982 deaths
• Scottish scholars and academics
• Historians of French literature
• Academics of the University of Glasgow
• Recipients of the Legion of Honour

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