KINNEY, Arthur F(rederick) 1933-

PERSONAL: Born September 5, 1933, in Cortland, NY; son of Arthur Frederick, Sr. and Gladys Elorsie (Mudge) Kinney. Education: Syracuse University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1955; Columbia University, M.S., 1956; University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1963. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, jazz.

ADDRESSES: Home—25 Hunter Hill Dr., Amherst, MA 01002. Office—Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002. Center for Renaissance Studies, P.O. Box 2300, Amherst, MA, 01004. Agent—McIntosh & Otis, Inc., 475 5th Ave., New York, NY 10017. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Yale University, New Haven, CT, instructor in English, 1963-66; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, assistant professor, 1966-68, associate professor, 1968-74, professor of English, 1974, Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Professor of Literary History, 1985—; director, bachelor's degree program in individual studies; director, Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, 1996—; Clark University, Worcester, MA, adjunct professor of English, 1971-83; New York University, adjunct professor of English, 1990—. Visiting professor, Oxford University, 1978, University of Liverpool, 1984, Sir Thomas Browne Institute, University of Leiden, 1984, 1986. Military service: U.S. Army, chaplain, 1966-68.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America (chair of Conference of Editors of Learned Journals, 1971-73, 1981-83), National Council of Teachers of English, Shakespeare Society of America, Milton Society, Malone Society, Renaissance English Text Society (vice president, 1983-84; president, 1984—), College English Association, American Studies Association, Renaissance Society of America (Executive Committee, 1990), Northeast Modern Language Association (executive secretary, 1971-73), New England College English Association (member of board of directors, 1971-73), Folger Institute (Executive Committee, 1990—), Sidney Society (president, 2001—), Michigan Academy of Arts and Letters, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Rho Delta Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Jules M. and Avery Hopwood Major Award for Writing, 1961; Bread Loaf scholar, 1962; Morse fellow, Yale University, 1964-66; senior fellow, Huntington Library, 1972, 1983; senior fellow, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1973; senior fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1977, 1982-83; Fulbright-Hays fellow, New College, Oxford, 1978; university research fellow, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1983-84.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Francis Lee Utley and Lynn Z. Bloom) Bear, Man, and God: Seven Approaches to Faulkner's "The Bear," Random House (New York, NY), 1964, revised edition, 1971.

On Seven Shakespearean Tragedies, Scarab Press (Sterling Junction, MA), 1968.

(Editor, with Kenneth W. Kuiper and Lynn Z. Bloom) Symposium, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1969.

Symposium on Love, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1969.

On Seven Shakespearean Comedies, Scarab Press (Sterling Junction, MA), 1969.

(Author of critical and textual notes) H. R., Mythomystes (1623), Scolar Press (Menston, England), 1972.

(Editor) Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars, Imprint Society, 1973, published as Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars: A New Gallery of Tudor and Early Stuart Rogue Literature Exposing the Lives, Times, and Cozening Tricks of the Elizabethan Underworld, edited, with notes, from quartos of the first editions, illustrations by John Lawrence, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1990.

Titled Elizabethans: A Directory of Elizabethan State and Church Officers and Knights with Peers of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1558-1603, Archon Books (Hamden, CT) 1973.

Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, Salzburg University (Salzburg, Austria), 1974.

Elizabethan Backgrounds: Historical Documents of the Age of Elizabeth I, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1975.

Dorothy Parker, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1978, revised edition, 1998.

Faulkner's Narrative Poetics: Style As Vision, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1978.

Rhetoric and Poetic in Thomas More's "Utopia," Undena Publications (Malibu, CA), 1979.

(Editor) Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Compson Family, G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1982.

(Contributor) James J. Murphy, editor, Renaissance Eloquence: The Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1983.

CELJ Handbook for Journal Editors and Contributors, Modern Language Association of America (New York, NY), 1984.

(Contributor) William Faulkner: Ten Years of Criticism, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1984.

Nicholas Hilliard's "Art of Limning," transcription by Arthur F. Kinney, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1983.

(Editor) Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Sartoris Family, G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1985.

Flannery O'Connor's Library: Resources of Being, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1985.

(Editor and author of preface and bibliography) Essential Articles for the Study of Sir Philip Sidney, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1986.

(Editor, with Jan van Dorsten and Dominic Baker-Smith) Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and the Creation of a Legend, E. Brill (Leiden, Netherlands), 1986.

Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1986.

John Skelton, Priest As Poet: Seasons of Discovery, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1987.

(Editor, with Dan S. Collins) Renaissance Historicism: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1987.

(Editor, with others) Sidney in Retrospect: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1988.

Continental Humanist Poetics: Studies in Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, and Cervantes, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1989.

(Editor) Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The McCaslin Family G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1990.

(Editor, with M. J. B. Allen, Dominic Baker-Smith, and Margaret M. Sullivan) Sir Philip Sidney's Achievements, AMS Press (New York, NY), 1990.

The Birds and Beasts of Shakespeare, Cheloniidae Press (Easthampton, MA), 1990.

(Editor, with Kirby Farrell and Elizabeth H. Hageman) Women in the Renaissance: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1990.

(Editor) Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Sutpen Family G. K. Hall (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Stephen Hahn) Approaches to Teaching Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," Modern Language Association of America (New York, NY), 1996.

Go Down, Moses: The Miscegenation of Time, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) Classical, Renaissance, and Postmodernist Acts of the Imagination, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1996.

(Editor) Poetics and Praxis, Understanding and Imagination, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1997.

(Editor) The Witch of Edmonton, Norton (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor) Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments, Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 1999, 2nd edition, 2004.

(Editor, with Lois Potter) Shakespeare, Text and Theater: Essays in Honor of Jay L. Halio, University of Delaware Press (Newark, NJ), 1999.

(Editor) The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor) A Companion to Renaissance Drama, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2001.

"Lies Like Truth": Shakespeare, "Macbeth," and the Cultural Moment, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

(Editor, with David W. Swain) Tudor England: An Encyclopedia, Garland (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor) "Hamlet": New Critical Essays, Routledge (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor) A Companion to Renaissance Drama, Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 2002.

Shakespeare by Stages: An Historical Introduction, Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 2003.

Supervisor of "English Literary Renaissance Monographs." Contributor of short stories and essays to periodicals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Southern Review, and Massachusetts Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Arthur F. Kinney began his long scholarly publishing career with a two-pronged focus that has served him well over the decades. His research into the works of William Faulkner evince one area of expertise, while his works on Shakespeare and other Tudor and Elizabethan writers evince Kinney's other area of expertise. In addition to publishing his own scholarly studies, Kinney has edited over two dozen scholarly works, including reference books and essay collections.

Kinney is known as an expert on the works of Southern American author William Faulkner. Kinney's early works on Faulkner include the book-length study Faulkner's Narrative Poetics: Style As Vision and a contribution to William Faulkner: Ten Years of Criticism. Between 1985 and 1990 Kinney edited a trilogy of critical studies on Faulkner's use of his own family as models for characters in his fiction: Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Sartoris Family, Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Sutpen Family, and Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The McCaslin Family. The essays and documents in each of these studies focus on a different branch of his family as portrayed in Faulkner's oeuvre. For example, in The Sartoris Family Kinney compiled early commentary, original essays, and rare photographs of the Faulkner family, upon whom the novelist based many of his characters, to create an "irresistible, valuable collection," wrote Choice contributor E. J. Wilcox. Mississippi Quarterly contributor Doreen Fowler likewise praised The Sutpen Family, calling it a "welcome aid" to deciphering Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! "By having brought together in one place … interpretations and by having so carefully and thoroughly researched the origin and background of Absalom, Arthur Kinney has made a significant contribution to the study of what well may be Faulkner's most enigmatic novel."

In 1996 Kinney published two interpretative works about Faulkner's fiction. In Go Down, Moses: The Miscegenation of Time, Kinney presents his interpretation of the short story collection Go Down, Moses, which Faulkner insisted made up a novel. According to Choice critic N. Tischler, Kinney, using "oldfashioned textual analysis," gives readers a "carefully crafted, fact-filled study." Also geared toward teachers of Faulkner's fiction was the title Approaches to Teaching Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," which Kinney edited with Stephen Hahn. Here the coeditors offer methods for presenting and discussing this well-known Faulkner novel.

Kinney excels at providing readers information useful for the study of the author in question. For example, in his 1985 publication, Flannery O'Connor's Library: Resources of Being, Kinney compiled, transcribed, and edited passages of works, including journals and magazines, from O'Connor's library, in which she had written marginal comments. "It is these reproductions that make Kinney's catalogue unusually valuable," observed W. J. Stuckey in a Modern Fiction Studies review.

On the other side of the coin are Kinney's studies of works by fifteenth-and sixteenth-century English authors. In his 1978 publication John Skelton, Priest As Poet: Seasons of Discovery, Kinney analyzes Skelton's major poems. He also proposes that these works were informed by Skelton's vocation of priest, a thesis that, according to Anne Hudson of the Review of English Studies, is "neither new, nor is it very effectively argued here." While Choice writer S. M. Foley called the book "gracefully" written, "comprehensive and masterful," Nicholas Orme of the English Historical Review cited a number of alleged methodological errors. "It is a brave scholar who goes outside his own discipline, and Kinney should be commended for this," wrote Orme, "but one regretfully concludes that the grasp of liturgy and history in this book falls short of what is needed in such an enterprise."

Among the works Kinney published at the turn of the millennium were Tudor England: An Encyclopedia and A Companion to Renaissance Drama. These works demonstrate Kinney's ability to marshal the knowledge of others to produce encyclopedic works of note. "Monumental and multidisciplinary" are adjectives Choice reviewer P. J. Jones used to describe the former work, which combined the talents of 250 scholarly contributors who wrote biographical entries, as well as entries on the visual arts, literature, education, music, science, religion, social history, government, and economics. The latter title formed part of the "Black-well Companions to Literature and Culture" series. It, too, brings together entries by forty well-known British and American scholars of Renaissance drama. Choice writer C. S. Cox predicted this "well-organized, well-written volume" would prove of "great utility" to a variety of students of Renaissance drama.

More specifically dealing with the works of Shakespeare are such books as the essay collection Shakespeare: Text and Theatre, Essays in Honor of Jay L. Halio and Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, "Macbeth," and the Cultural Moment. Shakespeare Quarterly contributor Joan Ozark Holmer noted the "attractively edited book [Shakespeare] presents a full house of critical perspectives … a wide range of readers, Shakespearean specialists and nonspecialists alike, will find something to please them among the rich variety of essays housed here." In Lies Like Truth, Kinney attempts to reconstruct the cultural moment of 1606 when Shakespeare's drama Macbeth was first performed. "The result is both a learned source of information about Macbeth and Shakespeare—a database, Kinney would call it—and a provocative proposal for an historicist literary criticism modeled on hypertext," remarked John D. Staines in the Shakespeare Quarterly. Using a new method he developed himself, Kinney researched the period and created strings of data made up of individual words, phrases, and images that would spark in the reader an association with other pieces of data. Examples of his data sets include economic lexias, social lexias, lexias of lineage and honor, military lexias, and lexias of family. Then Kinney invites readers of the play to use data strings, which he calls lexias, as a jumping-off point for considering a particular aspect of Macbeth. Kinney does not tell readers how to interpret the play, as Staines explained: "Kinney thus does not offer the chimera of original intent but rather the pleasures of discovering possible responses to the play in its original moment." "Kinney thus sacrifices much of his authority to the reader's freedom—and also, at times, threatens to leave the reader adrift in a sea of data without much direction on how to synthesize it all," Staines added. "Nonetheless, although the lexias occasionally read like undigested lumps of information, they will lead readers in fruitful directions. Indeed, any one of these lexias could serve as the basis for a lengthy book on Macbeth."

Kinney once told CA: "My writing career began when I adapted the Book of Ruth for a Sunday school Easter play; I was eleven at the time, and the production of that play, to local acclaim anyway, insured my career as a writer. Later teenage journalism gave way to fiction and that to criticism. Now I try to interpret the people, events, and literature of the Elizabethan period—Shakespeare and his age—to those who want some fresh critical interpretations which begin in the background of the age. Writing helps me to think, for writing, I find, not only clarifies one's thought, but fixes it, as if in photographer's acid, in semipermanent form. Not only the ideas, then, but the expression become vital—since the way you say things defines what it is you are saying—and I find that writing, even more than research and judgment, leads me to new ideas I had not been fully conscious of before sitting down at the typewriter."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Historical Review, April, 1989, review of Renaissance Historicism: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, p. 567.

American Literature, October, 1985, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library: Resources of Being, p. 537; June, 1991, review of Critical Essays on William Faulkner, p. 376; March, 1997, review of Go Down, Moses: The Miscegenation of Time, p. 250.

American Reference Book Annual, 1986, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library, p. 447.

Bibliographical Society of America, January, 1987, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library, p. 94.

Black Scholar, fall, 1996, review of Go Down, Moses, p. 104.

Booklist, April 1, 2001, review of Tudor England: An Encyclopedia, p. 1502.

Bookwatch, July, 1998, review of Dorothy Parker, revised edition, p. 6.

Carolina Quarterly, winter, 1997, review of Classical, Renaissance, and Postmodernist Acts of the Imagination, p. 41.

Choice, January, 1986, E. J. Wilcox, review of Critical Essays on William Faulkner, p. 740; June, 1987, J. R. Buchert, review of Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England, p. 1551; November, 1987, S. M. Foley, review of John Skelton, Priest As Poet: Seasons of Discovery, p. 475; November, 1996, N. Tischler, review of Go Down, Moses, pp. 456-457; April, 2001, P. J. Jones, review of Tudor England; December, 2002, C. S. Cox, review of A Companion to Renaissance Drama, pp. 629-630.

Christian Century, May 15, 1985, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library, p. 513.

Clio, fall, 1990, review of Renaissance Historicism, p. 107.

Comparative Drama, spring-summer, 2002, John R. Ford, review of Shakespeare: Text and Theater, pp. 244-247.

English Historical Review, July, 1990, Nicholas Orme, review of John Skelton, Priest As Poet, p. 725.

English Language Notes, December, 2001, Dolora Cunningham, review of Shakespeare: Text and Theater, pp. 73-75.

Journal of the History of Ideas, January, 1990, review of Continental Humanist Poetics: Studies in Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, and Cervantes, p. 168.

Library Journal, February 1, 1985, Sheila Coghill, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library, p. 98; June 1, 1987, Margaret Hallissy, review of John Skelton, Priest As Poet, p. 114.

Mississippi Quarterly, summer, 1997, Doreen Fowler, review of Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Sutpen Family, pp. 515-518.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1985, W. J. Stuckey, review of Flannery O'Connor's Library, pp. 750-751.

Modern Language Review, July, 1991, review of Continental Humanist Poetics, p. 661; January, 2003, Adrian Streete, review of Lies Like the Truth: Shakespeare, "Macbeth," and the Cultural Moment, pp. 167-168.

Modern Philology, May, 1989, review of Humanist Poetics, p. 421; May, 1990, review of Renaissance Historicism, p. 400; August, 1991, review of Humanist Poetics, p. 95.

Notes and Queries, September, 2001, Michael G. Brennan, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600, pp. 327-328.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, November, 1987, review of Humanist Poetics, p. 501.

Reference & Research Book News, review of Dorothy Parker, revised edition, p. 215; May, 2001, review of Tudor England, p. 32.

Reference Reviews, November, 2001, review of Tudor England.

Renaissance and Reformation, fall, 1991, review of Renaissance Historicism, p. 315.

Renaissance Quarterly, spring, 1989, review of John Skelton, Priest As Poet, p. 127; summer, 1988, review of Humanist Poetics, p. 339; spring, 1991, review of Continental Humanist Poetics, p. 142; summer, 2000, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600, p. 615; fall, 2002, Mark Fortier, "The State of the Shakespeare Industry," pp. 1038-1040.

Review of English Studies, May, 1989, Anne Hudson, review of John Skelton, Priest As Poet, pp. 249-250; November, 1998, Michael G. Brennan, review of Humanist Poetics, pp. 540-541.

Sewanee Review, July, 1989, review of Renaissance Historicism, p. 456.

Shakespeare Newsletter, spring-summer, 2001, Rachel Wifall, review of Shakespeare: Text and Theater, pp. 31-32.

Shakespeare Quarterly, summer, 1998, review of Classical, Renaissance, and Postmodernist Acts of the Imagination, p. 230; summer, 2001, Joan Ozark Holmer, review of Shakespeare: Text and Theater, pp. 300-303; winter, 2002, John D. Staines, review of Lies Like the Truth, pp. 561-564.

University Press Book News, September, 1989, review of Continental Humanist Poetics, p. 21.

Virginia Quarterly Review, fall, 1988, review of Renaissance Historicism, p. 143.