Mechthild Cranston, Ph. D.

Professor of French, Chevalier des Palmes Académiques, Member of Phi Beta Kappa, Member of the Emeritus College at Clemson

Contact
Department of Languages
Email: cransto@g.clemson.edu

Education
Ph.D., UC Berkeley

Since her graduate student days, Dr. Cranston has been an active professional enjoying teaching and/or studying at universities here and abroad (Marburg, Germany; Paris, France, and Perugia, Italy). She has received NEH and/or ACLS grants to Yale, Stanford and Paris and was awarded a knighthood by the Prime Minister of France via the French Ministry of Education (Chevalier des Palmes Académiques). At Clemson, she was honored with a Provost Medal for Scholarly Achievement, the Class of 1940 D. W. Bradbury Award for Outstanding Service to the Honors College and two Board of Trustees Awards for Faculty Excellence.

Her many articles have appeared in journals like PMLA (USA), FMLS (England), RLMC (Italy), MLR (England), Les Lettres Françaises (Paris), Dalhousie French Studies (Canada), Theoria (South Africa), Neophilologus (The Netherlands), and The Comparatist (USA). Her major focus has been on modern French poetry (Apollinaire, Char, Saint-John Perse) and the works of Marguerite Duras (see bibliography below), reviewed in, e.g., The French Review, World Literature Today, Romanische Forschungen (Germany), and the Carnet critique (Paris). She has worked on literature and painting as well as poetry and music. Her own poetry has received recognition from the American Poetry Association.

Dr. Cranston has been a frequent reviewer for World Literature Today and participated in many professional meetings as organizer, chair, discussant, or speaker. For nine years, she was editor of The Comparatist, award-winning journal of the Southern Comparative Literature Association.

Since her retirement in 2004, Dr. Cranston has enjoyed reading and writing in Menton, France, attending concerts in Berlin, Germany, and restoring her mother's home and garden in Berkeley, California. Springs and autumns, she writes, are most impressive in the Carolinas.

Selected Professional Works

Books (Published)

Beyond the Book. Marguerite Duras: Infans. Scripta Humanistica, 1996.

Laying Ways. Texts and Pre-texts. With a Foreword by Germaine Brée. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1990.

Orion Resurgent: René Char, Poet of Presence. Madrid: Porrúa, 1979.

Mains serrées. Poèmes en trois langues. Paris: Debresse, 1971. Foreword by Roger Asselineau. Frontispiece: Collage by Paul Dewalhens.

Enfance, mon amour … la Rêverie vers l’enfance dans l’œuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire, Saint-John Perse et René Char. Paris: Debresse, 1970. Foreword by René Ménard. Frontispiece: Collage by Paul Dewalhens.

Florilège: An Anthology of French Literary Criticism. Berkeley: ASUC Press, 1966.

Books (Edited)

Translations of Lyric Poetry from Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish by Philip E. Cranston. Afterword by Roger Asselineau. Scripta Humanistica, 2002.

In Language and in Love: The Unspeakable. Essays for Marguerite Duras. Scripta Humanistica, 1992.

Le Gai Savoir. Essays in Linguistics, Philology, and Criticism Dedicated to the Memory of Manfred Sandmann. Potomac, MD: Studia Humanitatis, 1983.

Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)

Guillaume Apollinaire: Du monde curopéen á l’univers des mythes. Paris: Minard, 1970: “Voyage en Rhénanie, voyage vers la mort avec Guillaume Apollinaire.”

Guillaume Apollinaire: Images d’un destin. Paris: Minard, 1967: “Sortir d’Orkenise: Réflexions sur Les Fiançailles, Le Brasier, et Onirocritique.”