Samuel G. Armistead

Samuel G. Armistead
Born	Samuel Gordon Armistead 1927 Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, Historian, Professor and critic of literature

Samuel G. Armistead (born in Pennsylvania in 1927) is a prominent ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, Historian, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and critic of literature. He is considered one of the most notable Hispanist scholars of the second half-century and early twenty-first century. He has specially studied Medieval Spanish language and literature, Hispanic folk literature, comparative literature and folklore. He has excelled also in his studies on minority languages ​​and archaic, that exist still. He wrote a multi-volume series that collects information to the traditional literature of the Sephardic Jews. He is author (co-author, editor, or co-editor) of over twenty book, and several hundred articles, on Medieval Spanish Literature, Modern Hispanic Oral Literature, and Comparative Literature. His research fields that have a particular interest include also early poetry, medieval history, Hispanic dialectology, the Spanish epic and Romance old and traditional. He has conducted numerous field surveys on the language and oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco and East as well as communities in Portugal, Israel, and several sites in the United States and he has also surveyed in rural communities of Spain and Portugal.

Biography

Samuel Gordon Armistead was born in Pennsylvania and graduated in Penn Charter School in 1945. He after spent six months in the U.S. Merchant Marine and traveled to France and the Caribbean, where he finished perfect his Spanish, which had attracted him since his adolescence. Beginning in the fall of 1945 began to study Spanish literature at Princeton University. He received his doctorate in Spanish literature and Romance languages in this university in 1955. By then he had begun teaching at the same university (1953-1955) where he was doctoral student from the following year and began a teaching career that led him to become a professor at the universities of California (Los Angeles) (UCLA), between 1956 and 1967, Purdue University (Indiana) from 1967 to 1968, University of Pennsylvania, between 1968 and 1982, and University of California, Davis where he teaches courses since 1982. In 1957, initiated a collaborative project to collect, edit and study, from a comparative perspective, this massive body of Hispanic oral literature. Since the beginning of his research (1957) worked closely with another eminent Spanish scholar, Joseph H. Silverman (1924-1989) and the musicologist Israel J. Katz (born 1930), with whom he has developed a very extensive work primarily focused on the oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco and the Orient. He has also worked closely with Hispanist Manuel da Costa Fontes in studies focusing on the oral tradition of Portugal and Brazil, especially

Since 1975, he developed a field study on Hispanic linguistics of Spanish colonial home communities in Louisiana, which still exists in that state (since 18th century). Thus, he published the book The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana in 1992, that collects information obtained of his investigations. Currently he is at work on additional aspects both of Louisiana Spanish and its oral literature. He also published six-volume of Portuguese traditional romances from the Azores Islands since 2003. He is currently working on subsequent volumes.

Notables Contributions

Are considered as exemplary and transcendentals the works published by Samuel G. Armistead, alone or in collaboration with colleagues, about medieval Spanish literature (epic, chronicles, and lyrical jarchas primitive ballads) and its modern oral survivals, as well as the Pan-Hispanic Ballad and pan-European and language, culture and literature of the Sephardic Jews and other minority communities and cultures. They are also indispensable work on the languages ​​and oral literatures of various Hispanic linguistic groups (from the Canary Islands and Mexico) located in the state of Louisiana. El romancero judeo-español en el Archivo Menéndez Pidal (The Judeo-Spanish ballads in the Archive Menéndez Pidal , 1978), has been frequently used as a reference work for all students of Sephardic ballads. Samuel G. Armistead has also carried out pioneering studies and clairvoyants on other genres of oral literature pan-Hispanic, such as song lyrics (from the Mozarabic jarchas contemporary lyrics to the songs), riddles, folk tales, proverbs and improvised oral poetry. It has also published important studies concerned and also on traditional Arabic literature and epic French, German and pan. Among the contributions made ​​stronger by Samuel G. Armistead to studies Hispanic literature, their finding should be noted that nearly a score of Sephardic romances are directly and genetically with the epic medieval Spanish, French and German, rather than with the texts printed by publishers romancísticos century XVI. This has given an extraordinary boost to the theories called "traditionalists" about the genesis and evolution of Hispanic ballads that have always defended their genetic dependence of the epic, compared to the theory called "individualistic", which denied the links epic and argued that the ballad was a genre created mostly by scholars of the sixteenth century mills. Another colossal contribution of Armistead on hispanistica studies has been his continued claim of the field work and the pursuit of oral literature materials among people belonging to lower classes and social groups and linguistically peripheral and marginalized within their respective cultural areas. Finally, it is imperative to note that Professor Armistead has formed, in their courses, seminars and lectures to many generations of Spanish scholars, and that the influence of his teaching has contributed greatly to the evolution and development of American Hispanic school throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century.

His Bibliography

His books are :

• Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia (with Joseph H. Silverman), 1971
• Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, Vol. I: The Judeo-Spanish Ballad Chapbooks of Yacob Abraham Yona; (with Joseph H. Silverman) ,May 1, 1972
• Romances judeo-españoles de Tánger (Judeo-Spanish Romances of Tangier, with Joseph H. Silverman), 1977
• El romancero judeo-español en el Archivo Menéndez Pidal (The Judeo-Spanish ballads in the Archive Menéndez Pidal, with several autors) (1978)
• Tres calas en el romancero (Three bays in the ballads, with Joseph H. Silverman), 1979
• Hispania Judaica: Studies on the history, language, and literature of the Jews in the Hispanic world (with Joseph H. Silverman and Josep M. Sola-Solé), 1980
• Judeo-Spanish Ballads from New York (with Joseph H. Silverman), 1981
• Seis romancerillos de cordel sefardíes (Six romancerillos of Sephardic string, with Silverman and Iacob M. Hassán), 1981
• En torno al romancero sefardí: hispanismo y balcanismo de la tradición judeo-española (Around the Sephardic ballads: Hispanism and Balkanism of the Judeo-Spanish, with Joseph H. Silverman), 1982.
• Bibliografías del romancero oral 1 (Bibliographies of oral ballads 1), 1992
• The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana, 1992
• Musica Y Poesia Popular De España Y Portugal (Music and Popular Poetry of Spain and Portugal, with Kurt Schindler)
• Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews (three volumes, with Silverman and Israel J. Katz ), 1971 - 1994.
• La tradición épica de las "Mocedades de Rodrigo" (The epic tradition of "Rodrigo Mocedades"), 1999

Honors and Awards

• Medieval Academy of America (Fellow, 1973)
• Doctor of Humane Letters (Georgetown University, 1990)
• American Folklore Society (Fellow, 1991)
• Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (Miembro Correspondiente, 1998)
• U.C. Davis Faculty Research Lecturer (1998-1999)
• Premio Internacional Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1999)
• Distinguished Lecturer in Medieval Studies (Arizona State University, Tempe, 2000)
• U.C. Davis Distinguished Professor (2003)
• elected foreign Corresponding Member
• Real Academia Española (June 2009)
• awarded Doctorate honoris causa, Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid, December 2010).

See Also

• Isleño Americans

External Links

• http://www.esefarad.com/?p=6889 e-Sefarad: Noticias del mundo Sefardí (In English: e-Sefard: News of Sefardi world)