Guy Davenport

(South Carolina, USA, 1927- Kentucky, USA, 2005)

Writer, painter and university professor. He studied art at Duke University, specializing in Classical and English Literature, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1948. At Melton College, Oxford, he wrote a thesis on Joyce. He taught at Washington University in Saint Louis. He received his doctorate from Harvard with a thesis on Pound's Songs. After teaching at Haverford College between 1961 and 1963, he ended up at the University of Kentucky, where he remained until he retired. In 1990 he received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for short stories and essays in which he related American civilization to the traditions of classical and European culture. In 1963 he published his first book, The intelligence of Louis Agassiz: a specimen book of scientific writings (Beacon). In its narrative, the short story takes on the intellectual intensity of the cultured essay, part of the lyrical concision of the contemporary poem and a structure that often resembles a cinematographic documentary. He published more than half a dozen short story collections, including Da Vinci's Bicycle: ten stories (Johns Hopkins, 1979), Apples and pears and other stories (North Point Press, 1984), The Jules Verne steam balloon: nine stories (North Point, 1987) and A table of green fields (New Directions, 1994).