- Robert Torrance
Robert M. Torrance is Professor Emeritus of
Comparative Literature atUC Davis .Torrance received his B. A. from Harvard in Greek and English, his M. A. at UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature, and his Ph. D. at Harvard in Comparative Literature. After teaching at Harvard and at Brooklyn College of CUNY, he came to UC Davis in 1976.
During his 25 years at Davis, where he served several terms as both director and graduate adviser, he played a central role in designing the undergraduate curriculum and in instituting the Ph. D. program in Comparative Literature, and in establishing the Program in Nature and Culture.
His book-length publications are translations of two plays of Sophocles, "Philoctetes" and "The Women of Trachis"; "The Comic Hero" (from Homer to Joyce and Mann); "Ideal and Spleen: The Crisis of Transcendent Vision in Romantic, Symbolist, and Modern Poetry"; "The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science"; and "Encompassing Nature: A Sourcebook" of widely varied readings exploring experiences and concepts of nature in both Western and non-Western cultures throughout the centuries, with extensive introductions and commentary as well as original translations. "Encompassing Nature" is the finest anthology of nature writing to have appeared anywhere, containing as it does texts you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Moreover, in Torrance's introductions and summaries the reader has what is the most balanced and incisive 500 page history of the interactions between humans and the world of nature.
Home address: 2800 Corona Drive, Davis, CA 95616. E-mail: rmtorrance@ucdavis.edu.
Bibliography
Sophocles, "The Women of Trachis" and "Philoctetes": a new verse translation (1966). Revised "Philoctetes" in Oscar Mandel, "Philoctetes and the Fall of Troy" (1981)
*The Comic Hero (1978)
*Ideal and Spleen: The Crisis of Transcendent Vision in Romantic, Symbolist, and Modern Poetry (1987)
*The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science (1994). Translations in modern Greek (2005) and Spanish (2006)
*Encompassing Nature: A Sourcebook (1998)
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