Robert Penn Warren | |
|---|---|
 Warren in 1968 | |
| Born | (1905-04-24)April 24, 1905 Guthrie, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | September 15, 1989(1989-09-15) (aged 84) Stratton, Vermont, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | |
| Genre |
|
| Notable awards |
|
| Spouse |
|
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders ofNew Criticism. He was also a charter member of theFellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journalThe Southern Review withCleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947Pulitzer Prize for the Novel forAll the King's Men (1946) and thePulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.[1] Yale awarded Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1973.
Warren was born inGuthrie, Kentucky, very near theTennessee-Kentucky border, to Robert Warren and Anna Penn.[2] Warren's mother's family had roots in Virginia, having given their name to the community of Penn's Store inPatrick County, Virginia, and she was a descendant of Revolutionary War soldier ColonelAbram Penn.[3]
After he had graduated from a private high school at age 15, his mother enrolled him inClarksville High School inClarksville, Tennessee for a year because she thought he was too young to go to college. In 1921 his left eye was removed after an accident, which canceled his appointment to theU.S. Naval Academy. That summer, he published in "The Messkit" his first poem "Prophecy." In the fall of 1921, at age 16, he enteredVanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in the summer of 1925summa cum laude,Phi Beta Kappa, and Founder's Medalist. That fall, he entered theUniversity of California, Berkeley, as a graduate student and teaching assistant, and upon receiving his M.A. in 1927, enteredYale University on a fellowship. In October 1928 he enteredNew College, Oxford, in England as aRhodes Scholar and received his B.Litt. in the spring of 1930. He also received aGuggenheim Fellowship to study in Italy during the rule ofBenito Mussolini. That same year he began his teaching career at Southwestern College (nowRhodes College) inMemphis, Tennessee.
While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Warren became associated with the group of poets there known as theFugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as theSouthern Agrarians. He contributed "The Briar Patch" to theAgrarian manifestoI'll Take My Stand along with 11 other Southern writers and poets (including fellow Vanderbilt poet/criticsJohn Crowe Ransom,Allen Tate, andDonald Davidson). In "The Briar Patch" the young Warren defends racial segregation, in line with the political leanings of the Agrarian group, although Davidson deemed Warren's stances in the essay so progressive that he argued for excluding it from the collection.[4] However, Warren recanted these views in an article on thecivil rights movement, "Divided South Searches Its Soul", which appeared in the July 9, 1956 issue ofLife magazine. A month later, Warren published an expanded version of the article as a small book titledSegregation: The Inner Conflict in the South.[5] He subsequently adopted a high profile as a supporter ofracial integration. In 1965, he publishedWho Speaks for the Negro?, a collection of interviews with black civil rights leaders includingMalcolm X andMartin Luther King Jr., thus further distinguishing his political leanings from the more conservative philosophies associated with fellow Agrarians such as Tate,Cleanth Brooks, and particularly Davidson. Warren's interviews withcivil rights leaders are at theLouie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky.[6]
Warren's best-known work isAll the King's Men, a novel that won thePulitzer Prize in 1947. Main characterWillie Stark resemblesHuey Pierce Long (1893–1935), the radicalpopulistgovernor of Louisiana whom Warren was able to observe closely while teaching atLouisiana State University inBaton Rouge from 1933 to 1942. The1949 film by the same name was highly successful, starringBroderick Crawford and winning theAcademy Award for Best Picture in 1949. There was anotherfilm adaptation in 2006 featuringSean Penn as Willie Stark. The operaWillie Stark byCarlisle Floyd, to his ownlibretto based on the novel, was first performed in 1981.
Warren served as theConsultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1944–1945 (later termedPoet Laureate), and won two Pulitzer Prizes in poetry, in 1958 forPromises: Poems 1954–1956 and in 1979 forNow and Then.Promises also won the annualNational Book Award for Poetry.[7]
In 1974, theNational Endowment for the Humanities selected him for theJefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities. Warren's lecture was entitled "Poetry and Democracy" (subsequently published under the titleDemocracy and Poetry).[8][9] In 1977, Warren was awarded theSt. Louis Literary Award from theSaint Louis University Library Associates.[10][11] In 1980, Warren was presented with thePresidential Medal of Freedom by PresidentJimmy Carter. In 1981, Warren was selected as aMacArthur Fellow and later was named as the first U.S.Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry on February 26, 1986. In 1987, he was awarded theNational Medal of Arts.[12] Warren was an elected member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[13][14]
Warren was co-author, withCleanth Brooks, ofUnderstanding Poetry, an influential literature textbook. It was followed by other similarly co-authored textbooks, includingUnderstanding Fiction, which was praised bySouthern Gothic and Roman Catholic writerFlannery O'Connor, andModern Rhetoric, which adopted what can be called aNew Critical perspective.
His first marriage was to Emma Brescia.[15] His second marriage was in 1952 toEleanor Clark, with whom he had two children,Rosanna Phelps Warren (born 1953) and Gabriel Penn Warren (born 1955). During his tenure at Louisiana State University he resided at Twin Oaks (otherwise known as theRobert Penn Warren House) in Prairieville, Louisiana.[16]
Warren was a lifelong Democrat who cast his first vote forFranklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Formerly a segregationist, he renounced these views in the 1950s and began to advocate for African American civil rights, condemningDwight D. Eisenhower for not taking a firmer stance on the subject.[17]
He lived the latter part of his life inFairfield, Connecticut, andStratton, Vermont, where he died of complications from prostate cancer. He is buried at Stratton, Vermont, and, at his request, a memorial marker is situated in the Warren family gravesite inGuthrie, Kentucky.
In April 2005, theUnited States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Warren's birth. Introduced at the post office in his native Guthrie, it depicts the author as he appeared in a 1948 photograph, with a background scene of a political rally designed to evoke the setting ofAll the King's Men. His son and daughter, Gabriel andRosanna Warren, were in attendance.
Robert Penn Warren's papers are held in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale celebrated the centennial of Warren's birth on October 21, 2005, at an event featuring Harold Bloom and Warren's daughter poet Roseanna Warren.
Vanderbilt University created the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, which is sponsored by the College of Arts and Science.[18] It began its programs in January 1988, and in 1989 received a $480,000 Challenge Grant from theNational Endowment for the Humanities. The Center promotes "interdisciplinary research and study in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences."
In 2014 Vanderbilt University opened Warren College, one of the first 2 residential colleges at the university, along with Moore College.
He was a charter member of theFellowship of Southern Writers.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
.png)
