Memorial notice for Gerald Gillespie

Gerald Gillespie, 1933-2025

The stimulating conversation and disciplinary imagination of Gerald Ernest Paul Gillespie, president of the Association in 1994-1997, come vividly to mind as the Association mourns his passing. Comparatists know his enthusiasm, his organizational zeal, and his commitment to sustaining the Association as an open house for discovery and debate. His love for the “motley crew” of comparatists, as he called us, was contagious.

A scholar’s publications retrace an intellectual journey. Originally a scholar of German Romanticism, he treated that field as a place of connections and used it to develop a rich network of analogies of style, genre, and theme. Starting from works of literary history, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's Historical Tragedies (1966) and a rediscovery of German Baroque Poetry (1971), he found a vein he would continue mining with his translations of the pseudonymous The Nightwatches of Bonaventura (1971, 2014), a dark piece of Gothic comedy from 1804, and Ludwig Tieck’s rewritten fairy tale Der gestiefelte Kater (Puss-in-Boots) (1971). Tieck’s false naïveté and genuine irony captured the kinds of incongruity that prompt both laughter and reflection (very much in character for this translator), and in 2013 Professor Gillespie issued a revised edition of the translation with commentary, Ludwig Tieck’s ‘Puss-in-Boots’ and the Theater of the Absurd. The melting of the “fourth wall” characteristic of that play also transpires in some of Gillespie’s writings on our profession: see his essays in By Way of Comparison: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Comparative Literature (2004) and Rebuilding the Profession (ed. Dorothy Figueira, 2020). The collection Garden and Labyrinth of Time: Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Literature (1988) opens a variety of perspectives on those centuries of restless invention, a line taken further in “Scientific Discourse and Postmodernity: Francis Bacon and the Empirical Birth of ‘Revision’,” an essay included in Early Postmodernism: Foundational Essays (ed. Paul Bové, 1995). The labyrinth motif, denoting the infinite turns and returns of discovery, grounds his Proust, Mann, Joyce in the Modernist Context (2003, revised edition 2010), a study for which the Joycean tags “Echoland” and “Here Comes Everybody” are suited: here learning and taste bring clarity to complexity. Readers will also want to consult Professor Gillespie’s essays in the CHLEL volumes on Romantic Drama and Romantic Prose Fiction (1994, 1998), his contributions to The Picaresque: A Symposium on the Rogue’s Tale (1994), Narrative Ironies (1997) and Contextualizing World Literature (2015), and the many articles in journals and Festschriften where his Joycean scope of learning and his Goethean serenity can be found. Many minds and careers have been touched by his writing, his teaching, his constructive engagement, and his friendship.

Haun Saussy

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J'ai succédé à Gerald Gillespie comme Président de l'AIlC. J'évoque deux petits événements qui vont permettre d'esquisser un portrait spontané d'un ami qui a été un très grand universitaire, d'une intelligence, d'une culture et d'une lucidité intellectuelle remarquables. Dans les débats qui ont préparé ma mise en candidature aux fonctions de président, je me souviens qu'il a été dit que Gerald était bavard. On souhaitait manifestement que je fusse moins bavard. Gerald n'était pas bavard, mais d'une disponibilité permanente à l'échange et à l'apport à autrui, d'une aide constante dans une constante lucidité. Lors de la dernière réunion du bureau de l'AILC que j'ai présidée, Gerald a conclu cette réunion avec un rapport sur les comités de recherche. Je l'ai remercié personnellement ainsi que les membres du bureau en remarquant que nous avions tenté d'agir aussi rationnellement que possible. Gerald a doucement ajouté: aussi raisonnablement que possible. Cet ajout traduisait son pragmatisme, sa lucidité et son humilité, autant de qualités indispensables. Il était un spécialiste du romantisme. Ce qui est peu dire sur ses compétences. Il avait une culture littéraire qui lui permettait de tisser d'innombrables relations; il illustrait comme un état spontané du comparatisme. Sa personnalité continuera de nous accompagner longtemps.

Jean Bessière

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Gerald Gillespie was a comparatist of an earlier dispensation, inclusive before it became performative.  He was a generous colleague, mentor, and friend.  He truly loved the ICLA and all it represented. He was brave, quietly and cheerfully battling illness for decades. He was an inspiration to all who knew him and had the pleasure of working with him. Gerald was an Irish American, raised in Ohio, incarnating the strengths of middle America and his immigrant parents.  He had the "gift of gab" and used it to good effect.  In this spirit, I wish to offer him a traditional Irish blessing: "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, dear Gerald."

Dorothy M Figueira

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 Gerald Gillespie hat uns in hohem Alter verlassen. Er war ein „Großer“, ein Komparatist, Weltbürger und Humanist, ausgestattet mit einem hohen Maß an literarischem Wissen, Gelehrtheit, menschlicher Empathie, Hilfsbereitschaft und einem besonderen Humor. Ich verdanke ihm die allererste Besprechung meiner in deutscher Sprache verfassten Doktorarbeit (1977!), denn er war Komparatist mit germanistischem Schwerpunkt, mehrsprachig unterwegs, was auch in der Komparatistik keine Selbstverständlichkeit ist. Die wissenschaftliche Zusammenarbeit mit Gerald, vor allem auf dem Gebiet der Romantik und der avantgardistischen Literatur (Joyce) hat Generationen geprägt. Er war ein unverzichtbarer Ratgeber in Bezug auf unsere Arbeit in der AILC/ICLA, in der er in vielen Gremien mitgewirkt hat, mit Diplomatie und Umsicht. Ich verliere einen Kollegen und Freund, der mein komparatistisches Leben bereichert hat.

Manfred Schmeling