Caroline Brady (philologist)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Caroline Agnes Brady (also known as Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady; October 3, 1905 – November 5, 1980) was an American philologist who specialised in
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
and Old Norse works. Her works included the 1943 book ''The Legends of Ermanaric'', based on her doctoral dissertation, and three influential papers on the
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
poem ''
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
''. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University, among other places. Brady was born an American citizen in Tientsin, China, and traveled frequently as a child, spending time in Los Angeles, California, British Columbia, and
Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
, Texas. She studied in the University of California system, receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees, and her Ph.D. in 1935. She next became an English instructor at that university's College of Agriculture, and worked as an assistant professor of languages and literature at Berkeley from 1941 to 1946. The following three years were spent at the University of Pennsylvania, until, at the end of 1949, Brady moved to teach at
Central Oregon Community College Central Oregon Community College is a community college in Bend, Oregon. It primarily serves residents of Deschutes, Jefferson, and Crook Counties. Additionally its district includes portions of Klamath, Lake, and Wasco counties. History Cent ...
; her resignation due to "ill health" was announced a few months later. After being named the 1952–53
Marion Talbot Marion Talbot (July 31, 1858 – October 20, 1948) was Dean of Women at the University of Chicago from 1895 to 1925, and an influential leader in the higher education of women in the United States during the early 20th century. In 1882, while ...
Fellow of the
American Association of University Women The American Association of University Women (AAUW), officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a nationwide network of 170,000 ...
and writing two articles, Brady's scholarship ceased for a quarter of a century. In 1979, and posthumously in 1983, her final two articles were published. Brady's monograph, ''The Legends of Ermanaric'', argued that the
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
king
Ermanaric Ermanaric; la, Ermanaricus or ''Hermanaricus''; ang, Eormanrīc ; on, Jǫrmunrekkr , gmh, Ermenrîch (died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia ...
was subject to two competing traditions, and earned her a reputation as "a broad and discriminating investigator" with "a sovereign disregard of established opinion". Her papers on ''Beowulf'', meanwhile, were identified by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature, as "three fundamental studies" that were "philological in the traditional sense", shedding light on "the shades of meaning of the diction" used in the poem. Brady concluded that the ''Beowulf'' poet "is no artificer mechanically piling up synonyms and conventional metaphors, but an artist who knows how to use a variety of words and phrases".


Early life and education

Caroline Agnes Brady was born on October 3, 1905, in Tientsin, China. She was the daughter of United States Army Colonel David John Brady, an engineer who was then the general manager of the
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, Limited, was established with foreign capital around 1879 to mine coal for the steamships of the Chinese Merchants' Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial Chinese Navy. English mining engineer Robert ...
in Qinhuangdao, and his wife (Annie Lucy) Maude Short, daughter of John Short, the deputy prothonotary of Sherbrooke, Quebec. The two had married the year before, at the
Holy Trinity Church Holy Trinity Church may refer to: Albania * Holy Trinity Church (Berat), Berat County * Holy Trinity Church, Lavdar, Opar, Korçë County Armenia * Holy Trinity Church, Yerevan Australia * Garrison Church, Sydney, South Wales, also known as ''H ...
in Shanghai. Caroline was one of two children, and the eldest by ten years of her sister, Frances Maud Brady. Her father, the son of British emigrants, had been raised in
Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
, Texas, and traveled as the army took him. His two brothers, John W. and Will P. Brady—Caroline Brady's uncles—both became prominent Texas attorneys and jurists. Will P. Brady worked as the first
district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...
of Reeves County, Texas, and later as a judge of the county court in El Paso. John W. Brady rose to prominence within Austin, and Texas generally, as an assistant attorney general and judge, before killing his mistress in 1929 and being sentenced to three years in prison. Caroline Brady's mother, meanwhile, traced back through four generations of her matriline to
Anthony Van Egmond Anthony Van Egmond (born Antonij Jacobi Willem Gijben, 10 March 17785 January 1838) was purportedly a Dutch Napoleonic War veteran. He became one of the first settlers and business people in the Huron Tract in present-day southwestern Ontario Can ...
(Caroline Brady's great-great-great-grandfather), an early settler of Canada, whose true identity as the Dutch fugitive Antonij Jacobi Willem Gijben—not, as he claimed, as a direct descent of the counts of Egmond—was not uncovered until the second half of the twentieth century. In May 1910, when Brady was four, her family arrived in Los Angeles, California, via Shanghai, aboard the steamer '' Bessie Dollar''. The ship carried only two families and a woman traveling alone, in addition to a cargo of
pig iron Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate product of the iron industry in the production of steel which is obtained by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silic ...
, and had what the ''
Los Angeles Herald The ''Los Angeles Herald'' or the ''Evening Herald'' was a newspaper published in Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1873 by Charles A. Storke, the newspaper was acquired by William Randolph Hearst in 1931. It ...
'' described as "a rough voyage across the Pacific", striking a whale. By the end of the year, the family was living in British Columbia. Though the ''Herald'' had described Brady's father as a
Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co-f ...
engineer, by the end of World War I he was serving overseas as part of the Rainbow Division of the United States
Army National Guard The Army National Guard (ARNG), in conjunction with the Air National Guard, is an organized Militia (United States), militia force and a Reserve components of the United States Armed Forces, federal military reserve force of the United States A ...
, in France and Germany as first a
captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
and then a
major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...
. During these years, until about September 1919, Caroline Brady and her family stayed with her uncle, John W. Brady, in his large Austin house. David Brady returned in August or September 1919; by the following year he was working with his brother Will at the Los Angeles-based Sunshine Oil Corporation. In August 1924 Brady matriculated at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), then known as the Southern Branch of the University of California. She entered Teachers College, for studies in kindergarten-primary education. Brady was active in a number of organizations at UCLA, including
Beta Phi Alpha Beta Phi Alpha () was a national collegiate sorority operating under that name in the United States from 1919 until 1941. It was absorbed by Delta Zeta sorority. History The group had a succession of names. Founded on the campus of the Univer ...
, the YWCA, and the Prytanean Society, of which she was president. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1928, and two years later, on May 15, 1930, received a Master of Arts from the school's
Berkeley campus The campus of the University of California, Berkeley and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th-century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck (best known for the San Francisco Pala ...
. That same year she began her Ph.D., also at Berkeley, and graduated in 1935, with the thesis ''The Legends of Ermanaric''. Her dissertation committee was chaired by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, with whom Brady would coauthor an article five years later.


Name

Brady is occasionally referred to as Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady. Though her published output universally refers to her as either "Caroline A. Brady" or "Caroline Brady", the program for her dissertation defense names her "Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady". Several library entries and membership lists of the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
also use the longer name.


Career

In 1935, the same year that she received her Ph.D., Brady became an English instructor at the College of Agriculture at the University of California. Brady was promoted on July 13, 1941 to assistant professor of languages and literature at the Berkeley campus. In 1943, her "completely rewritten" dissertation was published under the same title, ''The Legends of Ermanaric''. Brady continued teaching at Berkeley until 1946. Thereafter, she taught for three years at the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of English. In 1949 Brady moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon, as one of the four inaugural instructors for the newly opened
Central Oregon Community College Central Oregon Community College is a community college in Bend, Oregon. It primarily serves residents of Deschutes, Jefferson, and Crook Counties. Additionally its district includes portions of Klamath, Lake, and Wasco counties. History Cent ...
. The college had campuses at both Bend and Klamath Falls; Brady taught at both, offering courses in English Composition and Survey of English Literature. After only a few months in the position, Brady resigned, citing "ill health". By May 1952, Brady was working as the synonym editor for C. L. Barnhart, Inc., the publisher of Thorndike-Barnhart dictionaries, in
Bronxville, New York Bronxville is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States, located approximately north of Midtown Manhattan. It is part of the town of Eastchester. The village comprises one square mile (2.5 km2) of land in its entirety, a ...
. That year she was named the 1952–53
Marion Talbot Marion Talbot (July 31, 1858 – October 20, 1948) was Dean of Women at the University of Chicago from 1895 to 1925, and an influential leader in the higher education of women in the United States during the early 20th century. In 1882, while ...
Fellow of the
American Association of University Women The American Association of University Women (AAUW), officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a nationwide network of 170,000 ...
. The $2,200 fellowship was for "a study and reinterpretation of the substantial compounds and phrases in
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
poetry", looking at contextual word usage to "determine whether the various poets used them in exactly the same way". Brady's work was to take place at
Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most ...
and
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, and in 1952 she published two related articles: "The Synonyms for 'Sea' in ''Beowulf''", and "The Old English Nominal Compounds in -''rád''". Brady's subsequent activities are unclear. In 1979, she was listed again with a California address. That year, she published the second piece in her ''Beowulf'' trilogy, Weapons' in ''Beowulf''." The final work in the trilogy, Warriors' in ''Beowulf''," was published posthumously, in 1983.


Personal life

In her 1941 ''
Who's Who ''Who's Who'' (or ''Who is Who'') is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biography, biographical information on the prominent people of a country. The title has been adopted as an expression meaning a gr ...
in California'' entry, Brady was described as a
Democrat Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to: Politics *A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people. *A member of a Democratic Party: **Democratic Party (United States) (D) **Democratic ...
and an
Episcopalian Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the l ...
. Her father died in late January 1953, and her mother in November 1959. Caroline Brady died on November 5, 1980, in Bellevue, Washington. The year before she was listed with an address in Corona del Mar by ''
Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom o ...
'', the journal that published her final two works. Brady's sister, by then Frances Brady Ackley, died on December 14, 1993; her obituary mentioned only cousins among her survivors.


Publications

Brady's book ''The Legends of Ermanaric'' suggests the
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
king
Ermanaric Ermanaric; la, Ermanaricus or ''Hermanaricus''; ang, Eormanrīc ; on, Jǫrmunrekkr , gmh, Ermenrîch (died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia ...
, who ruled in the fourth century AD, was the subject of two competing traditions: one, in Ostrogothic lore, viewing him as a good king, and a second, promulgated by those subjugated by him, as evil. Brady's thesis gained less traction than her ability to investigate the intractable problems of Germanic myth, and the convoluted nature of the related scholarship. She was noted as "a broad and discriminating investigator", who had "a sovereign disregard of established opinion". Such disregard caused one reviewer to label Brady's work "more valuable in the sphere of criticism than construction," and another to note that her "conclusions are reached without reliance on the views of predecessors, and one may be sure that, in some quarters, the volume will be thoroughly combed for flaws to match those it has uncovered in the reasoning of others". Indeed, after Brady's "vigorous tilting with no less a scholar than
Kemp Malone Kemp Malone (March 14, 1889 in Minter City, Mississippi – October 13, 1971) was a prolific medievalist, etymologist, philologist, and specialist in Chaucer who was lecturer and then professor of English Literature at Johns Hopkins Universit ...
," he penned two separate reviews disparaging what he termed her scholastic immaturity, and suggesting "she overestimates the worth of debaters' points". Others shared concerns with Brady's thesis while being generally supportive, including the Old English scholar Philip W. Souers, who wrote that: Brady's 1979 and 1983 articles on the words used to describe weapons and warriors in the
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
poem ''Beowulf'' suggested that, unlike the interchangeability of words used for other subjects such as strong drink, the words used to describe weapons and warriors were precisely tailored to fit their specific contexts. Taken with her 1952 article "The Synonyms for 'Sea' in ''Beowulf'' ", these are described by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe in ''A Beowulf Handbook'' as "three fundamental studies" that examine the context in which the ''Beowulf'' poet chose a word rather than simply the word itself. Brady concluded that "this poet is no artificer mechanically piling up synonyms and conventional metaphors, but an artist who knows how to use a variety of words and phrases". Her approach was considered " philological in the traditional sense" by O'Keeffe, and to have shed light on "the shades of meaning of the diction" used in the poem. In addition to her book and the ''Beowulf'' articles, Brady published a number of other works during her career. She also presented several papers, including some which ultimately went unpublished, at academic conferences—notably at meetings of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast and the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
.


Books

* *


Articles

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Reviews

* * *


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brady, Caroline (philologist) 1905 births 1980 deaths Educators from Tianjin 20th-century philologists American philologists Women philologists University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Anglo-Saxon studies scholars Writers from Tianjin American expatriates in China