Ronald Howard Paulson (born May 27, 1930 in
Bottineau, North Dakota
Bottineau is a city in Bottineau County, North Dakota, United States. It is the county seat of Bottineau County and is located just over south of the Canada–United States border. The city's population was 2,194 at the 2020 census.
The city ...
) is an American professor of English, a specialist in English 18th-century art and culture, and the world's leading expert on English
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
William Hogarth
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like s ...
.
Education
Paulson earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in 1952, where he was an editorial associate of campus humor magazine ''
The Yale Record
''The Yale Record'' is the campus humor magazine of Yale University. Founded in 1872, it became the oldest humor magazine in the world when ''Punch'' folded in 2002."History", The Yale Record, March 10, 2010. http://www.yalerecord.com/about/histo ...
''. He earned his
doctorate degree
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
from Yale in 1958.
Academic career
Paulson has taught and held various administrative positions at several universities in the United States, including the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
from 1959 to 1963 and
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...
from 1963 to 1967. He was the Chairman of the
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
English Department from 1967 to 1975. From 1975 to 1984 he was a professor at Yale University and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department from 1976 to 1983 and the Director of the British Studies Program from 1976 to 1984.
Paulson returned to Johns Hopkins University in 1984, serving as the Department Chairman from 1985 to 1991.
He has been a member of the editorial board of the
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
''
ELH: English Literary History'' and was senior editor from 1985 to 2004; he served on the editorial boards of the journals ''
Studies in English Literature
Study or studies may refer to:
General
* Education
**Higher education
* Clinical trial
* Experiment
* Observational study
* Research
* Study skills, abilities and approaches applied to learning
Other
* Study (art), a drawing or series of drawin ...
''; PMLA; ''
Eighteenth-Century Studies
''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' is an academic journal established in 1966 and the official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. It focuses on all aspects of 18th century history. It is related to the annual ''Studies ...
''; and the Johns Hopkins University Press.
On Paulson’s 3 vol. Hogarth,: “it must be the most detailed and the most deeply pondered monograph on a Btitish artist ever written” (Michael Kitson, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790).
Of Hogarth, “in our own time, the American scholar Ronald Paulson has devoted to him the best three-volume biography written about any eighteenth-century Englishman” (Paul Johnson, Humorists).
Honors and recognitions
Paulson was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University from 1973 to 1975 and has been the Mayer Professor of Humanities since 1985. He was a member of the Academic and Advisory Committees and Governing Board of the
Yale Center for British Art
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...
and the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art in London from 1975 to 1984. He has also been a
Guggenheim Fellow
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
(1965–66, 1986–87), an NEH Senior Fellow (1977–78), and a fellow of the
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
(1978, 1987).
In 1988, Paulson traveled with several
humorist
A humorist (American) or humourist (British spelling) is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business e ...
s from the United States to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
as part of a cultural exchange.
Books
* ''Theme and Structure in Swift's 'Tale of a Tub'' (1960)
* ''Hogarth's Graphic Works'' (1965)
* ''The Fictions of Satire'' (1967)
* ''Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England'' (1967)
* ''Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times'' (1971)
* ''Rowlandson: A New Interpretation'' (1972)
* ''Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century'' (1975)
* ''The Art of Hogarth'' (1975)
* ''Popular and Polite Art in the Age of Hogarth and Fielding'' (1979)
* ''Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable'' (1982)
* ''Representations of Revolution (1789–1820)'' (1983)
* ''Book and Painting: Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible'' (1983)
* ''Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, 1700–1820'' (1989)
* ''Hogarth's Graphic Works'' (rewritten and reset) (1989)
* ''Figure & Abstraction in Contemporary Painting'' (1990)
* ''Hogarth'', Vols. 1–3 (1991–93)
* ''The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterodoxy'' (1997)
* ''The Analysis of Beauty'' (editor) (1997)
* ''Don Quixote in England: The Aesthetics of Laughter'' (1998)
* ''The Life of Henry Fielding'' (2000)
* ''Hogarth's Harlot: Sacred Parody in Enlightenment England'' (2003)
* ''Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature'' (2006)
* ''The Art of Riot in England and America'' (2010)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paulson, Ronald
1930 births
Living people
People from Bottineau County, North Dakota
American academics of English literature
Yale University alumni
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
Rice University faculty
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Yale University faculty