Otten, Charlotte F. 1926- (Charlotte Otten, Charlotte Fennema Otten)

PERSONAL:

Born March 1, 1926, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Edward E. (a communications sales representative) and Anna Fennema; married Robert T. Otten (a professor of classical languages and literature), December 21, 1948; children: Gillis R., Justin E. Education: Calvin College, B.A., 1949; University of Michigan, M.A., 1969; Michigan State University, Ph. D., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Grand Rapids, MI.

CAREER:

Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, assistant professor, 1972-74, associate professor of English, 1974-77; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, professor of English, 1977-91, professor emeritus, 1991—, director of interim course at University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, 1983 and 1984. University of Michigan, lecturer at Extension Center, 1972. Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council, member of board of directors, 1995—; judge of poetry contests; consultant to National Endowment for the Humanities.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, Milton Society, Children's Literature Association, Shakespeare Association of America, Society for Textual Scholarship.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from American Council of Learned Societies, 1973, and Calvin Foundation, 1978; fellow of University of Chicago, 1980 and 1982; fellow at Newberry Library, 1985-86.

WRITINGS:

Environ'd with Eternity: God, Poems, and Plants in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England, Coronado Press (Lawrence, KS), 1985.

(Editor) A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with Gary D. Schmidt) The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1989.

(Editor) English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, University of Florida Press (Gainesville, FL), 1991.

(Under name Charlotte Otten; editor) The Virago Book of Birth Poetry, Virago (London, England), 1993, published as The Book of Birth Poetry, Bantam (New York, NY), 1995.

January Rides the Wind: A Book of Months (poetry for children), illustrated by Todd L.W. Doney, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1997.

The Literary Werewolf, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 2002.

Home in a Wilderness Fort, Arbutus Press (Traverse City, MI), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Death of a Salesman, edited by H.W. Koon, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1983; Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction, Solaris (Rochester, MI), 1986; Praise Disjoined, edited by William Shaw, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1991; and Eros and Anteros, edited by Donald A. Beecher, Dovehouse Editions (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1992. Contributor of articles and poetry to literature journals and literary magazines, including Manhattan Poetry Review, Commonweal, Southern Humanities Review, Anglican Theological Review, Skylark, Free Lunch, California Quarterly, Amherst Review, Christian Science Monitor, and Poetry South.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charlotte F. Otten once told CA: "A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture sprang from my work in Renaissance literature. Not a wayward study of the irrational, it addresses the problems, struggles, conflicts, anxieties, triumphs, and joys of human life through the study of this particular phenomenon—metamorphosis.

"I started writing poetry when I took a group of students to Wales. When my Welsh colleague (and poet) asked why I wasn't writing poetry along with my students, I was nonplused. I thought that ‘co-teaching’ them excused me from doing the assignments. The question festered in my mind. I wrote my first poem in Wales about the ruins left by Eric Gill in Wales, the next poem about my students at the grave of Henry Vaughan. After that came poems about other people and places: Le Corbusier at Harvard; the Keweenaw Peninsula and Sleeping Bear Dune in Michigan; Abraham Lincoln in Hodgenville, Kentucky; Chicago. Then came poems on war—World War I, World War II, Vietnam; poems on family and fishing; an anthology of birth poetry; and a picture book of poetry for children."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1997, Susan Dove Lempke, review of January Rides the Wind: A Book of Months, p. 403.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January, 1998, Deborah Stevenson, review of January Rides the Wind, p. 171.

Children's Literature, 1992, Phyllis Bixler, The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics, p. 230.

Choice, July-August, 1992, J.T. Rosenthal, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 1737.

English Studies, December, 1993, Paul Dean, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 545.

Journal of Modern Literature, fall-winter, 1990, review of The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature, p. 236.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1997, review of January Rides the Wind, p. 1461.

Library Journal, March 1, 1995, Ellen Kaufman, review of The Book of Birth Poetry, p. 75.

New York Times Book Review, April 5, 1987, Anne Rice, review of The Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, p. 33.

Notes and Queries, September, 1993, Isobel Grundy, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 365.

Review of English Studies, November, 1994, Judy Simons, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 606.

School Library Journal, June, 1990, Ruth Gordon, review of The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature, p. 64; October, 1997, Kathleen Whalin, review of January Rides the Wind, p. 121.

Shakespeare Quarterly, spring, 1993, Margaret P. Hannay, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 114.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 1993, Sarah Feeny Welch, review of English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, p. 491.

Speculum: Journal of Medieval Studies, April, 1988, Jan M. Ziolkowski, review of A Lycanthropy Reader, p. 451.

Times Literary Supplement, August 21, 1987, review of The Lycanthropy Reader, p. 907.