Roger Sherman Loomis

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Roger Sherman Loomis (October 31, 1887 – October 1966) was an American scholar and one of the foremost authorities on medieval and Arthurian literature.

Born to American parents in Yokohama, Japan, he was educated at The Hotchkiss School Lakeville, Connecticut. He earned a B.A. from Williams College in 1909, an M.A. from Harvard University in 1910, and a bachelor of literature from Oxford University in 1913. was a member of the International Arthurian Society (president of American Branch, 1948 – 63), the Modern Language Association, the Mediaeval Academy of America (fellow; second vice-president, 1961 – 64), the Modern Humanities Research Association, and the American Humanist Association. He was an instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana from 1913 to 1918, when he left to teach at Columbia University. He was a member of Columbia's English faculty until 1958, and held an emeritus position there until his death in 1966; he was an Oxford University Eastman Professor from 1955 – 1956.

From his early years Loomis wrote on influence of Celtic mythology on the Arthurian legend, especially in the Holy Grail myth. His book A Mirror of Chaucer's World is a pictorial presentation of drawings, sculpture, paintings, and other materials related to Geoffrey Chaucer and his age.

Roger Sherman Loomis was the son of Henry Loomis and Jane Herring Greene, the great nephew of William Maxwell Evarts and the great-great grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman.

[edit] Works

Illustrations of Medieval Romance On Tiles From Chertsey Abbey (1916)
Freshman Readings (1925)
Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (1927)
The Art of Writing Prose (1930) with Mabel Louise Robinson, Helen Hull and Paul Cavanaugh
Models for Writing Prose (1931)
The Romance of Tristram and Ysolt (1931) translator
Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (1938) with Laura Hibbard Loomis
Introduction to Medieval Literature, Chiefly in England. Reading List and Bibliography (1939)
Representative Medieval And Tudor Plays (1942) editor with Henry W. Wells
The Fight for Freedom: College Reading in Wartime (1943) with Gabriel M. Liegey
Modern English Readings (1945) editor with Donald Lemen Clark
Medieval English Verse and Prose (1948) with Rudolph Willard
Arthurian Tradition And Chretien De Troyes (1949)
Wales and the Arthurian Legend (1956)
Medieval Romances (1957) editor with Laura Hibbard Loomis
Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, A Collaborative History (1959) editor
The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol (1963)
The Development of Arthurian Romance (1963)
A Mirror of Chaucer's World (1965)
The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles: Especially Those in Great Britain and France (1973) expansion of Robert Huntington Fletcher's 1906 book
Lanzelet (2005) translator Thomas Kerth, notes by Loomis and Kenneth G. T. Webster