SUMMER 2002 •
VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1
Chaucer,
Cosynage, and Criticism of a Literary Kind
BY JANET TOBIN
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PHYLLIS
GRABER JENSEN/
BATES COLLEGE
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Elaine
Tuttle Hansen '69, newly named president of Bates College. |
Mount Holyoke can be proud of its cosynage, Middle English for kinship,
with Elaine Tuttle Hansen ’69. Although she uses the email moniker
Chaucer4me2 and has authored articles and books on Geoffrey Chaucer
and Old English verse, Hansen has both feet firmly rooted in the
modern age, studying the English poet through the lens of feminist
literary theory. "I want to understand whether Chaucer was
really ‘womanis frende,’ and whether a feminist approach can open
up his poetry in ways that make it speak to our age," she says.
It was her experiences as a student and professor at liberal arts
colleges, says Hansen, that led her to meld such seemingly disparate
areas of scholarship as gender issues in literature and the analysis
of a male literary figure who lived more than six hundred years
ago. It was her distinguished career as a leader at such institutions
and her commitment to liberal arts education that made her Bates
College’s choice to become its seventh--and first woman--president.
Embarking
on a pilgrimage that should prove no less eventful than that of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Hansen notes that Mount Holyoke provided
an essential prologue to her position, which begins this summer.
"My intellectual journey toward this presidency began at Mount
Holyoke, where I was encouraged always to aspire to the next level,"
says Hansen. "The College gave me the skills to be a productive
scholar and an effective administrator and instilled in me a commitment
to academic excellence. I will work to sustain and extend the
liberal arts tradition that lies at the heart of Bates and Mount
Holyoke."
After
receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from Mount Holyoke, Hansen
went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota
in 1972 and a doctorate at the University of Washington in 1975,
both in English literature. As a graduate student, she focused
on Old English, rather than Middle English, in which Chaucer wrote,
returning to Chaucer in a "real way" when she began teaching courses
on him at Hamilton College in 1978. "Although I continued to publish
articles in Old English and my first book was on Old English wisdom
poetry," says Hansen, "I found it more and more important to write
about things I was learning in the classroom. This is the part
of teaching at a select liberal arts college I think is the most
exciting. For a scholar, teaching is truly transformative; the
oft-praised intersection between teaching and research is attainable
and sustainable. My journey from Old English to Chaucer to contemporary
women writers looks rather meandering unless you understand the
teaching connection."
That
journey was also a function of the times. Hansen was learning
to teach Chaucer at Hamilton just as feminist theory and women’s
studies were emerging as academic disciplines. Soon she was not
only reading books by contemporary women authors but was teaching
about them in the course Contemporary Women Writers. "So the first
important question I found myself needing to ask about Chaucer
had to do with his (in)famous female characters--how could we interpret
them, as late twentieth-century women readers, and what were Chaucer’s
‘real’ attitudes toward the notorious antifeminism of his day?,"
she says. Hansen moved to Haverford College in 1980 and continued
exploring such questions, in the process rising to the rank of
chief academic officer there in 1995 and continuing in that role
until being tapped by Bates.
Hansen
says she is looking forward to the challenge of leading Bates,
where she plans to "support the liberal arts college ideal, which
needs to be preserved, moved forward, and made accessible." By
the sound of things, the Mount Holyoke alumna devyseth a parfit
pilgrimage.
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