Bruce Mitchell (scholar)

Raymond Bruce Mitchell (8 January 1920 – 30 January 2010) was a scholar of Old English.

Biography

Early life, Australia

Mitchell was born in Lismore, New South Wales. He won a free place at the University of Melbourne but was unable to take it up and instead after leaving school at 15, worked as a student teacher while studying part-time. He earned a general Arts degree.^[1]

He was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1940 and served as an intelligence officer in the Australian Imperial Force from 1941 to 1946. He then ran a printing company before returning to the university, again part-time while working as a gardener, builders' labourer and railway porter, and tutoring English at the university. He took Firsts in English Language and Literature in 1948 and in Comparative Philology in 1952.^[1]

Scholarly career, Oxford

He entered Merton College, Oxford, on a scholarship in 1952, the same year he married Mollie Miller,^[2] who had accompanied him from Australia. They received permission to be married from Mitchell's supervisor, J.R.R. Tolkien.^[3] He received a doctorate in 1959 with a thesis entitled Subordinate Clauses in Old English Poetry.^[1][4] In 1986 he gained the degree of D.Litt (Oxon) for his contribution to Old English studies.

Mitchell was a Fellow and a Tutor at St Edmund Hall, Oxford from 1954^[2] to 1987, and after retirement was elected an emeritus fellow.^[1][5] Though he spent his entire life in Oxford since age 32, he never lost his Australian accent, and displayed his heritage by having an Australian flag and a eucalyptus tree in his garden.^[3]

His specialty was Old English language and literature and particularly Beowulf; his textbooks on Old English language are considered classics in the field, as is his edition of Beowulf, which he published with Fred C. Robinson.^[6] His "magisterial" and "phenomenal" book on Old English syntax is still the standard reference work in the field.^[3]

Mitchell was Terry Jones's tutor and believed he was the inspiration for the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch; he was disappointed to find out Eric Idle had written it and it was not based on him.^[1]

Bibliography

Works authored

• Mitchell, Bruce; Fred C. Robinson (2012). A Guide to Old English (8 ed.). Oxford, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-4690-6.  (first published 1965)
• Mitchell, Bruce (1985). Old English Syntax, Vol. 1: Concord, the parts of speech, and the sentence. Oxford: Clarendon. ISBN 978-0-19-811935-7. 
• Mitchell, Bruce (1985). Old English Syntax Vol. 2: Subordination, independent elements, and element order. Oxford: Clarendon. ISBN 978-0-19-811944-9. 
• Mitchell, Bruce (1988). On Old English: Selected Papers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-15872-3. 
• Mitchell, Bruce (1995). An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-17436-3. 
• Mitchell, Bruce; Fred C. Robinsion; Leslie Webster (1998). Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts. Oxford, Malden: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-17226-0.  (first published 1998)

Selected articles

• Mitchell, Bruce (1992). "Literary Lapses: Six Notes on Beowulf and its Critics". Review of English Studies: 1–17. 
• Baker, Peter S.; Nicholas Howe (1998). "The Dream of the Rood Repunctuated". Words and works: studies in medieval English language and literature in honour of Fred C. Robinson. U of Toronto P. pp. 143–58. ISBN 978-0-8020-4153-1. 

Festschrift

Walmsley, John (2006). Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell. Oxford, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-4051-1483-7. 

References