Ralph Elliott

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For the American accountant and author, see Ralph Nelson Elliott.

Ralph Warren Victor Elliott,

FAHA (born Rudolf W. H. V. Ehrenberg; 14 August 1921 – 24 June 2012) was a German-born Australian professor of English, and a runologist
.

Life and career

Elliott was born Rudolf W. H. V. Ehrenberg in

Nazi regime, Kurt Ehrenberg decided it was best for his family to leave Germany. His eldest daughter married and emigrated to the United States. Rudolf and his younger sister, Lena, were sent to live with their uncle, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, in Edinburgh. Rudolf's parents managed to escape to Britain two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.[3]

Rudolf Ehrenberg enrolled at the

Leicestershire Regiment, and then to the Manchester Regiment in April 1945. He was severely wounded in combat in the Teutoburg Forest, and nearly died before being rescued several hours later.[3]

After the end of the war, Elliott resumed his studies at St Andrews, where he graduated in 1949. He taught at St Andrews for a while, before moving to the newly created

runic script that was published in 1959.[6]

He had two children (Naomi and Oliver) with his first wife in the United Kingdom. Later he remarried and had two more children (Hillary and Francis).

He emigrated to

Canberra Times for ten years and hosted a talkback radio session on ABC 666. He loved books and reading, and "donated signed book collections both to the ANU Library and University House".[9]

He died in Canberra on 24 June 2012.[9][10]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Ralph also published a book of collected essays on

Swythamley Park. He further claimed the location of the 'Green Chapel', which the knight Sir Gawain is taken to near the end of the tale, as being near ("two myle henne" v1078) to the old manor house at Swythamley Park at the bottom of a valley ("bothm of the brem valay" v2145) on a hillside ("loke a littel on the launde, on thi lyfte honde" v2147) in a large fissure ("an olde caue,/or a creuisse of an olde cragge" v2182–83).[11]
His work on the Green Knight and its story-locations also produced many essays on the relevant dialect and distinctive landscape topography of the moorlands of North Staffordshire, and scholars now accept that the Staffordshire Moorlands are both the linguistic and the topographic location of many scenes, even if the exact location of the Green Chapel itself remains contentious (the leading rival is near Wetton Mill, some eight miles SE). Most of his essays on the topic are collected in his The Gawain Country: Essays on the Topography of Middle English Alliterative Poetry (University of Leeds, 1984), but the book was later supplemented by the separate essay "Holes and Caves in the Gawain Country" (1988). A summary of his work in Sir Gawain is today most easily accessible on Derek Brewer (Ed.), A Companion to the Gawain-poet, Boydell & Brewer, 1999.

Honours

Elliott was a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1969).[12]

In 1990 he was made a

Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of "service to the community and to education".[13] In 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal for "service to Australian society and the humanities in the history of the English language".[14]
In 2005 he published a short autobiography entitled One Life, Two Languages.

Works

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-8103-1952-3
    .
  2. ^ "REL34675.002 – The France and Germany Star : Lieutenant R W V Elliott, Manchester Regiment". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
  3. ^ a b "REL34679 – University of St Andrews medallion for Honours English, 1947–48 : R W V Elliott". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  4. ^ "REL34677 – University of St Andrews medallion for General English, 1940 : R W H V Ehrenberg". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  5. ^ "Studio portrait of Lieutenant Ralph WV Elliott, Leicestershire Regiment". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  6. ^ "Professor Ralph Elliot". Australian National University Humanities Research Centre. Archived from the original on 22 November 2004. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  7. ^ Clunies Ross, Margaret; Tulloch, Graham (2012). "Ralph Warren Victor Elliott" (PDF). Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  8. ^ R. W. H. Elliott, "One Life, Two Languages", in A. Oizumi and T. Kubouchi, Hildesheim eds., Medieval English Language Scholarship. Autobiographies by Representative Scholars in Our Discipline, Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 2005, 42.
  9. ^ a b Steele, Colin (5 July 2012). "English expert helped shape Canberra's cultural life". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
  10. ^ Beeby, Rosslyn (27 June 2012). "Great scholar' Elliott dies aged 90". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
  11. ^ Ralph W. V. Elliott. "Searching for the Green Chapel" in J.K. Lloyd Jones ed., Chaucer's Landscapes and other essays: a selection of essays, speeches and reviews written between 1951 and 2008, with a memoir, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010, 300.
  12. ^ "Our history". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  13. ^ "Search Australian Honours". Australian Government. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  14. ^ "Search Australian Honours". Australian Government. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
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