Francis Lee Utley (May 25, 1907 in

Watertown, Wisconsin Watertown is a city in Dodge and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Most of the city's population is in Jefferson County. Division Street, several blocks north of downtown, marks the county line. The population of Watertown was 2 ...

– March 8, 1974) was a folklorist,

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...

, scholar of onomastics and

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, educator, and author.

Life and career

Born and raised in Watertown, Wisconsin, Utley attended the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

, from which he graduated with honors in 1929. He did his graduate literary studies at Harvard, earning the M.A. in 1934 and the Ph.D. in 1936. At Harvard, he came under the influence of

George Lyman Kittredge George Lyman Kittredge (February 28, 1860 – July 23, 1941) was a professor of English literature at Harvard University. His scholarly edition of the works of William Shakespeare was influential in the early 20th century. He was also involved i ...

in English who encouraged Utley's study of folklore. In 1936, he married Ruth Alice Scott and they had three children: Philip Lee, Andrew Scott, and Jean Marie. Utley began his teaching career in 1935 in the English department at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

; in 1973, he received the title of Professor of English and Folklore. He also served as visiting professor of folklore at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

and

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

. He was president of the American Folklore Society from 1951-1952, president of the

American Name Society The American Name Society (ANS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1951 to promote onomastics, the study of names and naming practices, both in the United States and abroad. The organization investigates cultural insights, settlement history, ...

in 1956, and president of the College English Association in 1969. Among his honors were being named Fellow of the American Folklore Society, Fellow of the American Anthropological Association, and Executive Council member of the Modern Language Association.

Scholarship

Utley worked in a variety of genres of literature and folklore, but is best known for work in folk narrative, onomastics, medieval literature, and dialect. D.K. Wilgus summarized his most significant contributions as "Bible of the Folk" (such as the Noah story in folk culture) and his contributions to the definitions and boundaries of folklore. He also is often cited for diffusionist ideas about relations of the sources of New World folktales from Europe. Indicative of the respect he received for his scholarship is a published festschrift honoring his contributions: ''Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley'' (1970).

Books and Major Articles

*''The Crooked Rib: An Analytic Index to the Argument About Women in English and Scots Literature to the End of the Year 1568.'' Columbus: Ohio State University, 1944. (ed., ''Bear, Man, and God: Eight Approaches to William Faulkner's The Bear.'' New York: Random House, 1971. *"Folk Literature: An Operational Definition." ''Journal of American Folklore'' 74 (1961): 193-206. Reprinted in ''The Study of Folklore'', ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965). *"The Study of Folk Literature: Its Scope and Use." ''Journal of American Folklore'' 71 (1958): 139-148. *"The Bible of the Folk." ''California Folklore Quarterly'' 4 (1945): 1-17. *"When Nettles in Winter Bring Forth Roses Red." ''PMLA'' 60 (1945): 346-55. *"The Linguistic Component of Onomastics." ''Names'' 11 (1963): 145-76 *"The Migration of Folktales: Four Channels to the Americas" ''Current Anthropology'' 15 (1974): 5-13.

References

*Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg, eds. ''Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970. *D. K. Wilgus, "Francis Lee Utley, 1907-1974." ''Western Folklore'' 33 (1974): 202-204. {{DEFAULTSORT:Utley, Francis 1907 births 1974 deaths University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni People from Watertown, Wisconsin Harvard University alumni Ohio State University faculty American folklorists Linguists from the United States American medievalists Writers from Ohio 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century linguists Historians from Wisconsin Presidents of the American Folklore Society