John Cruickshank (18 July 1924, Belfast – 11 July 1995[1]) was an Irish scholar and writer on the French language and French and francophone literature and culture. He was the first professor of French at the University of Sussex; founding the French studies department at that institution in 1962.[1] He was a specialist on French writers Albert Camus, Benjamin Constant, Henry de Montherlant, Alfred de Vigny, Blaise Pascal, and Romain Rolland.[1][2] During World War II he worked as a cryptologist for British military intelligence.

Life and career

Born in Belfast, Ireland, Cruickshank was the son of a journalist who reporter on Parliament.[3] attended grammar school at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in his youth.[2] He then studied foreign languages at Trinity College Dublin, but his education was interrupted by the events of World War II.[2] From 1943 through 1945 he worked for British military intelligence as a cryptographer.[2] He returned to Trinity College after the war to complete his education; graduating in 1948 with a First in both the French and German languages.[2] He took a position at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris as a lecturer on the English language; teaching for the 1948–1949 academic year.[2] There he pursued graduate studies, earning a Ph.D. with a dissertation on the French dramatist, writer and art historian Romain Rolland.[2]

In 1951 Cruickshank returned to the United Kingdom to take a post as assistant lecturer at the University of Southampton.[2] He remained there for the next eleven years, and in 1961 was made a senior lecturer.[2] In 1962 he left Southampton to establish the French studies program at the University of Sussex as that institution's first professor of French.[1][2] He remained there until his retirement in 1989.[2]

Partial list of books

  • Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (1960, author)
  • The Novelist as Philosopher (1962, contributing author among multiple writers)
  • Aspects of the Modern European Mind (1969)
  • French Literature and Its Background (1968-1970, six volumes as editor and contributing author)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 John Flower (12 August 1995). "French into English". The Guardian. p. 28.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 S.B.J. (January 1996). "JOHN CRUICKSHANK (1924–1995)". French Studies. L (1): 117–118. doi:10.1093/fs/L.1.117.
  3. ↑ Peter France (30 July 1995). "Professor John Cruickshank". The Independent.
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