Francis Fergusson (1904–1986) was an American teacher andcritic, a theorist ofdrama andmythology who wroteThe Idea of a Theater, (Princeton, 1949) a book about drama. He contributed an introductory essay to S. H. Butcher’s 1961 translation of Aristotle’sPoetics.[1] His other works includeDante's Drama of the Mind: A Modern Reading of the Purgatorio, which includes his translations of many passages. InThe Rarer Action (Rutgers, 1970), a volume in tribute to Francis Fergusson, the criticAllen Tate wrote: "The Idea of a Theater is a work comparable in range and depth withEric Auerbach'sMimesis. There is no other work by an American critic of which this can be said."[2]: x
Born inNew Mexico, he completed high school atThe Ethical Culture School in New York City, where he befriended future physicistJ. Robert Oppenheimer.[3] The two later attendedHarvard University together.[4] He then received aRhodes Scholarship and studied briefly atOxford University before traveling toFrance where he befriendedSylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company. Returning toNew York City, he took acting classes with the Polish directorRichard Boleslavski and wrote drama criticism for theHerald Tribune. In the early 1930s he founded the drama division of the then newBennington College in southwestern Vermont. After nearly a decade at Bennington, he moved on to teach atIndiana University and then atRutgers University, where he taught comparative literature. Among his students were poetRobert Pinsky[5] and fiction writerAlan Cheuse.[citation needed]
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