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Bernard MacGregor Walker Knox (November 24, 1914 – July 22, 2010^[1]) was an Englishclassicist, author, and critic who became an American citizen. He was the first director of theCenter for Hellenic Studies.^[2][3] In 1992 theNational Endowment for the Humanities selected Knox for theJefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities.^[4]

Knox was born in 1914 in the City ofBradford, Yorkshire, England. He was educated atBattersea Grammar School, and received his B.A. in classics fromSt John's College, Cambridge.^[5] In 1936, he joined and was wounded in combat with theInternational Brigades in theSpanish Civil War, which he joined alongsideJohn Cornford,Tom Wintringham,John Sommerfield and Jan Kurzke.^[6] He served in theUnited States Army duringWorld War II.^[7][8] In 1939 he married an American, Betty Baur, a novelist who wrote under the pen name Bianca van Orden;^[9] she died in 2006.^[1] His son,Macgregor Knox,^[1] is a prominent historian of 20th century Europe.

Bored with his first Army assignment with an anti-aircraft battery in England, Knox volunteered for work with theOffice of Strategic Services as he spoke French and some German. The OSS assigned him to theJedburgh program, and he parachuted intoBrittany on July 7, 1944 with team GILES. His team evaded German capture while working with the area resistance, arranging clandestine air parachute drops of weapons, and, when the regulars arrived, did liaison work between the US forces and theFrench resistance in order to sweep the German Army out of Brittany. In the spring of 1945, he deployed to Italy with an OSS team to work with theItalian Partisans scouting for Allied forces. It was here, during a firefight, where he was pinned down in a monastery filled with books that he resolved to take up his studies in the classics should he survive the war.^[10] He did so and received an M.A. fromHarvard, and a PhD fromYale.^[11] In the army, he achieved the rank of captain.

Knox taught at Yale until 1961,^[8] when he was appointed the first director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. After fulfilling a previous commitment to spend a year as Sather Lecturer at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, Knox served as director of the Center from 1962 until his retirement in 1985.^[2] He continued to write prolifically.

Knox is known for his efforts to make classics more accessible to the public.^[12] In 1959 his translations ofOedipus Rex were used to produce a series of television films forEncyclopædia Britannica and the Massachusetts Council for the Humanities, featuring the cast of the CanadianStratford Shakespeare Festival.^[13] He taught the poetRobert Fagles at Yale, and became Fagles's lifelong friend^[14] and the author of the introductions and notes for Fagles's translations ofSophocles's three Theban plays,Homer'sIliad andOdyssey, andVirgil'sAeneid.^[15] Reviewing the FaglesIliad inThe New York Times, classicistOliver Taplin described Knox's 60-page introduction as "His Master's Voice, taking the best of contemporary scholarship and giving it special point and vividness, as only Mr. Knox can."^[16] His combat experiences in World War II subtly inform these introductions.

Knox was the editor ofThe Norton Book of Classical Literature^[17] and also wrote extensively forThe New York Review of Books.^[3] Knox received the 1977George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for one of hisNew York Review pieces, a review ofAndrei Şerban's controversialLincoln Center production ofAgamemnon;^[18] the award committee described Knox's work as "a brilliant review of a major theatrical event" in which Knox "recognized that the director was attempting to solve the central problem of this play by finding a new way to express long passages of lyric language that have lost their immediacy for modern audiences."^[11] In 1990 he received the firstPEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for his bookEssays Ancient and Modern.^[19]

Knox is also known for his role in the controversy over similarities betweenStephen Spender'sWorld Within World andDavid Leavitt'sWhile England Sleeps: it was Knox, reviewing Leavitt's book forThe Washington Post, who first pointed out its similarities to Spender's older memoir (which Knox had reviewed in 1951).^[20][21] This ultimately led to Spender suing Leavitt and forcing the withdrawal and revision of Leavitt's book.^[22][23]

TheNational Endowment for the Humanities awarded Knox theCharles Frankel Prize in 1990,^[12][24] and in 1992 it selected Knox for theJefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities.^[25] Knox's lecture, which he gave the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males",^[26] became the basis for Knox's book of the same name, in which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical Greek culture to modern society.^[17]

He died of heart failure on July 22, 2010.^[27] He was buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery.^[28]

• 1945: TwoBronze Stars and theCroix de Guerre^[29]
• 1956:Guggenheim Fellowship^[30]
• 1977:George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, "for his review ofAndrei Serban’s production of Agamemnon atLincoln Center, published in theNew York Review of Books"^[31]
• 1977: Elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences^[32]
• 1985: Elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society^[33]
• 1990:Charles Frankel Prize, from theNational Endowment for the Humanities^[12][24]
• 1990:PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, forEssays Ancient and Modern^[34]
• 1992: Selected for theJefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities^[25]
• 2004: TheThomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by theAmerican Philosophical Society^[35]

Books:

• Bernard Knox,Cleanth Brooks, Maynard Mack,Tragic Themes in Western Literature: Seven Essays by Bernard Knox and Others (Yale University Press, 1955),ISBN 978-0-300-00328-4.
• Bernard Knox,Oedipus at Thebes (Yale University Press, 1957), reissued asOedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (Yale University Press, 1998),ISBN 978-0-585-37637-0.
• Bernard Knox,The heroic temper: studies in Sophoclean tragedy (University of California Press, 1964),ISBN 978-0-520-04957-4.
• Bernard Knox,Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979) (reprint, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986),ISBN 978-0-8018-3409-7
• Bernard Knox,Essays Ancient and Modern (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989),ISBN 978-0-8018-3789-0.
• Bernard Knox, editor,The Norton Book of Classical Literature (Norton, 1993),ISBN 978-0-393-03426-4.
• Bernard Knox,The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics (1993) (reprint, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994),ISBN 978-0-393-31233-1.
• Bernard Knox,Backing Into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal (W.W. Norton, 1994),ISBN 978-0-393-03595-7.

Articles and Book Chapters:

• "The Continuity of Greek Culture".Perspectives on Culture and Society.1:149–164. 1988.
• "Premature Anti-Fascist".The Antioch Review.57 (2). Essays, Personal & Political:133–149. Spring 1999.JSTOR 4613837.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

• Sophocles, tr. Robert Fagles, notes by Bernard Knox,The three Theban plays (Viking Press, 1982),ISBN 978-0-670-69805-9.
• Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox,The Iliad (Penguin Classics, 1991),ISBN 978-0-14-044592-3.
• Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox,The Odyssey (Penguin Classics, 1997),ISBN 978-0-14-026886-7.
• Virgil, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox,The Aeneid (Viking, 2006),ISBN 978-0-670-03803-9.
• Moses I. Finley, intro. Bernard Knox,The World of Odysseus (New York Review of Books, 2002),ISBN 978-1-59017-017-5.

• Bernard Knox at the Database of Classical Scholars

• 1914 births
• 2010 deaths
• English classical scholars
• Writers from Bradford
• Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
• Yale University alumni
• Classical scholars of Harvard University
• British people of the Spanish Civil War
• English emigrants to the United States
• National Humanities Medal recipients
• International Brigades personnel
• United States Army officers
• Classical scholars of Yale University
• Scholars of ancient Greek literature
• PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award winners
• Homeric scholars
• Harvard University alumni
• Members of the American Philosophical Society

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