Roger Sherman Loomis (October 31, 1887 – October 11, 1966) was an American scholar and one of the foremost authorities on medieval and Arthurian literature.
Contents |
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 was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford University in 1913. He held honorary degrees from Columbia, Williams, the University of Wales and the University of Rennes in France. During World War I, he edited an Army publication Atenshun 21. In 1930, Loomis attended the first International Arthurian Congress in Truro, Cornwall, where he and other scholars investigated Arthurian legends. Loomis 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. He left Illinois for Columbia University, where he taught from 1919 until 1958. He was a member of Columbia's English faculty and held an emeritus position from 1958 until his death in 1966. In 1955-6, he was an Eastman Professor at Oxford University.
Loomis was the author of 10 scholarly books as well as numerous journal articles. 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, published in 1965 by Princeton, is a pictorial presentation of drawings, sculpture, paintings, and other materials related to Geoffrey Chaucer and his age. His most notable book Arthurian Tradition and Chretien de Troyes, published by Columbia University in 1949 won the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America.
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. Loomis's first wife was Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis (1882-1921), a medieval scholar with whom Loomis shared an interest in Arthurian literature. They married in 1919 (Folklore 38.4 1927 405–407). Loomis subsequently married Laura Alandis Hibbard (1883-1960), with whom he collaborated in many of his research and writing efforts. He dedicated one of his final volumes to Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis "in grateful and loving remembrance" (The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol published by the University of Wales 1963; and later by Princeton University, in 1991).