Virginia Tufte Explained

Virginia James Tufte
Birth Name:Virginia James
Birth Date:August 19, 1918
Birth Place:Meadow Grove, Nebraska
Death Date:March 28, 2020
Death Place:Beverly Hills, California
Children:Edward Tufte
Education:A. B., University of Nebraska
M. A., Arizona State University
M. A. and Ph.D. University of California at Los Angeles

Virginia James Tufte (August 19, 1918 – March 28, 2020) was a writer and distinguished emerita professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her special fields were Milton, Renaissance poetry, and the history and grammar of English.

Early life and education

Virginia James was born in Meadow Grove, Nebraska, one of the ten children of Micah Dickerson James and Sarah Elizabeth Bartee James. Both of her parents were from Virginia.[1] She attended Midland College and worked as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Nebraska State Journal as a young woman.[2] [3]

After marriage, Tufte pursued further education, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1944,[4] a master's degree from Arizona State University, and master's and doctoral degrees in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.[5] Her 1964 dissertation was titled "Literary Backgrounds and Motifs of the Epithalamium in English to 1650".[6]

Career

Tufte was a member of the English faculty of the University of Southern California for 25 years, beginning in 1964, and retiring in 1989. At USC, she won teaching awards and was a co-founder of several interdisciplinary programs. She was perhaps best known for Grammar as Style (1971), which developed a new following several decades after it had gone out of print,[7] prompting her to write its successor, Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style (2006).[8] [9]

Besides her work on syntax and style, Tufte was notable for books and essays in two other areas of literary study and for a video biography. Her book The Poetry of Marriage: The Epithalamium in Europe and its Development in England (1970), a comprehensive history of the English epithalamium, grew from her doctoral research.[10] She also made studies of artists as interpreters of John Milton's poems.[11] [12] Besides numerous essays and contributions to books in this field, some in collaboration with Wendy Furman-Adams of Whittier College,[13] she wrote and produced a one-hour video biography of a literary illustrator Reaching for Paradise: The Life and Art of Carlotta Petrina (1994) that has appeared on educational television stations, is archived in college and university libraries, and is in use in classrooms.[14]

Tufte's interest in life and family histories is reflected also in two collaborative books with anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, Changing Images of the Family (1981)[15] and Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling and Growing Older (1992).[16]

Personal life

Virginia James married Edward E. Tufte in Omaha in 1940; her husband was city engineer and public works director of the city of Beverly Hills, California, for many years.[17] Their son is Edward Rolf Tufte, an expert in the field of information design, and active as a sculptor. Virginia James Tufte was widowed when her husband died in 1999; she died in 2020, aged 101 years, at her home in Beverly Hills.

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: October 23, 2010. Eva Epp. 2020-12-27. The Norfolk Daily News. en.
  2. Web site: Bell. Susan. September 11, 2020. In Memoriam: Virginia Tufte. 2020-12-27. USC Dornsife News. en.
  3. News: Tufte. Virginia. 1944-06-18. High School Musicians 'Reign' over N. U.. 23. The Nebraska State Journal. 2020-12-27. Newspapers.com.
  4. News: January 30, 1944. U. N. Grants 166 Degrees As First Semester Closes. 6. Lincoln Nebraska State Journal. December 27, 2020. NewspaperArchive.com.
  5. Web site: Virginia Tufte. 2020-12-27. Nebraska Authors.
  6. Tufte, Virginia James. "Literary Backgrounds and Motifs of the Epithalamium in English to 1650" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1964). ProQuest document ID 302117430.
  7. Moe. Peter Wayne. 2018. Virginia Tufte's Sentences. Style. 52. 4. 385–403. 10.5325/style.52.4.0385. 10.5325/style.52.4.0385. 0039-4238.
  8. Book: David Jauss. Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction. Writers Digest Books. 2008. 68, 69. 978-1-58297-538-2.
  9. Book: Brooks Landon. Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft. The Teaching Company. 2008. 22, 86, 122, 132.
  10. Book: Heather Dubrow. A Happier Eden: The Politics of Marriage in the Stuart Epithalamium. Cornell Univ Press. 1990. 0-8014-2296-5. registration.
  11. Furman-James. Wendy. Tufte. Virginia James. December 2001. Anticipating Empson: Henry Fuseli's Re-Vision of Milton's God. Milton Quarterly. 35. 4. 258–274. 10.1111/1094-348X.00024.
  12. Book: Galbraith M. Crump. Approaches to Teaching Milton's Paradise Lost. The Modern Language Association of America. 1986. Visualizing Paradise Lost: Classroom Use of Illustrations by Medina, Blake, and Doré.
  13. Web site: Whittier College. Wendy Furman-Adams. 2010-02-10.
  14. Web site: Wendy Furman-Adams. Reaching For Paradise: John Milton (1608-1674), Milton Illustration, and Carlotta Petrina (1901-1997). 2010-02-11.
  15. Book: Changing images of the family. 1979. Yale University Press. Tufte, Virginia., Myerhoff, Barbara G.. 0-300-02361-8. New Haven. 4638889.
  16. Book: Myerhoff. Barbara G.. Remembered lives: the work of ritual, storytelling, and growing older. Kaminsky. Marc. 1992. University of Michigan Press. 978-0-472-08177-6. Ann Arbor.
  17. Web site: American Society of Civil Engineers. Tufte, Edward E.; ASCE Fellow. 2010-02-10.

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