Wolfgang Clemen was an eminent German literary scholar who helped reestablish English Studies in Germany after World War II. His father, Paul Clemen

Paul Clemen

Paul Clemen was a German art historian known in particular for his large inventory of monuments in the Rhineland area, many of which were destroyed or severely damaged in World War II....

, was a well-known art historian.

Biography/Career

Clemen studied from 1928-34 at the Universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin, München, Bonn and Cambridge. Among his academic teachers were Ernst Robert Curtius

Ernst Robert Curtius

Ernst Robert Curtius was a German literary scholar, a philologist and Romance language literary critic....

, Carl Vossler, and Hugo Friedrich. He received his doctorate in 1936 with a doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare’s images, and his post-doctoral degree (Habilitation) with a study of Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

. After a short period as Lecturer for literary history at the University of Cologne

University of Cologne

The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...

, he moved to the University of Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

. From 1946 until 1974, he was chair of English at the University of Munich. In 1953, he was Visiting Professor at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

; in 1964, Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol

University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

.

In 1964, Clemen founded the Munich Shakespeare Library, one of the major collections of scholarship on William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 outside Britain.

Scholarly achievements

Clemen’s reputation rests in large part on his monograph on Shakespeare’s Imagery, a revised English translation of his doctoral dissertation published in 1951 with Methuen Publishing in London. However, the English translation of his Habilitation on Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

’s early poetry was of similar importance. Until Clemen's study, Chaucer's The House of Fame

The House of Fame

The House of Fame is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1379 and 1380, making it one of his earlier works.-Overview:The House of Fame is over 2,000 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. Upon falling asleep the poet finds...

, The Book of the Duchess

The Book of the Duchess

The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1910. Accessed March 11, 2008. is the earliest of Chaucer’s major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC," and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose...

, The Parliament of Fowls, and Anelida and Arcite

Anelida and Arcite

Anelida and Arcite is a 357 line poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. It tells the story of Anelida, queen of Armenia and her wooing by false Arcite from Thebes, Greece.Although short, it is a poem with a complex structure, with an invocation and then the main story...

had not been considered to be at the same level of creative mastery as the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde

Troilus and Criseyde

Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...

. This changed because Clemen could demonstrate that the Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

author was as independent of his French and Classical sources in his early as in his later poetry.

Select publications

• Shakespeare's Soliloquies
• The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery
• Das Wesen der Dichtung in der Sicht moderner englischer und amerikanischer Dichter
• Der junge Chaucer / Chaucer's Early Poetry
• Die Tragödie vor Shakespeare
• Das Drama Shakespeares
• Shakespeares Monologe

Literature

• Frank-Rutger Hausmann, Anglistik und Amerikanistik im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003), esp. pp. 448-49.
• Ina Schabert, ed. Wolfgang Clemen im Kontext seiner Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte vor und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009.
• Richard Utz, Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), esp. pp. 207-20.