|
bibliography
The Canterbury Tales (1951)
Chaucer's Idea of What Is Noble (1971)
A Choice of Chaucer's Verse (1972)
Geoffrey Chaucer (1956)
The Man of Law's Tale (1969)
The Masque of Hoperd (1948)
The Nun's Priest's Tale (1959)
New Oxford Poetry 1937 (1937)
The Pardon of Piers Plowman (1945)
The Pardoner's Tale (1958)
The Poet Chaucer (1949)
Shakespeare's Professional Skills (1964)
Troilus and Criseyde (1971)
Visions from Piers Plowman: Taken from the Poem of William Langland (1949)
|
basic biography
Nevill Judson Coghill was born in 1899. Very little is known of his childhood, but he ended up as
a fellow of Exetor College, Oxford. In 1948 he was at Gresham College, London as Professor
of Rhetoric and in 1957 he was made Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford until 1966.
Besides his interests in 14th century literature, he had a keen involvement in theatre and
Shakespeare. He is most famous for his direction of the 1949 production of The Tempest by
the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He died in 1980.
He was a particular friend of Tolkien out of all the Inklings, and it was Coghill who began the
famous phrase that reading Tolkien's books was "hobbit-forming" or a hard "hobbit" to break
(Tolkien "Letters" 406). His friend wrote this poem as a matter of fact:
Mr Neville Judson Coghill
Wrote a deal of dangerous doggerill.
Practical, progressive men
Called him Little Poison-pen.
("Letters" 359)
|
