Christopher Armitage
Professor of English & Comp Literature (3225); Adjunct Professor of Peace War & Defense (3206)
514 Greenlaw Bldg
Campus Box 3520
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3250
919-962-4047 (work)
919-489-0469 (home)
armitage@email.unc.edu
B.A. Oxford University, 1954
M.A. Oxford University, 1958
M.A. University of Western Ontario (Canada), 1964
Ph.D. Duke University, 1967
Research And Teaching Interests
Christopher Mead Armitage, who joined the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty in 1967, specializes in seventeenth- and twentieth-century English and Canadian literature. His lively style and personal interest in his students have earned him several awards for excellent teaching: UNC Board of Governors Award for career excellence in teaching in 2009, a Tanner Award for excellence in undergraduate instruction in 2003, his second Bowman and Gordon Gray chair (1986-1989, 2005-2010) for excellence in inspirational teaching of undergraduates, the first UNC Professor of Distinguished Teaching in 1995, and the Nicholas Salgo Award in 1981. Armitage earned a bachelor’s degree with honors (1954) and a master’s degree (1958) from Oxford University. He earned a second master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada in 1964, and a doctorate from Duke University in 1967. Since 1970 he has returned annually to England to conduct a six-week study program on “Shakespeare in Performance” for students and alumni. In addition, Armitage lectures frequently for the Carolina Speakers program. He appeared on horseback and in eighteenth-century costume to represent William R. Davie at UNC’s Bicentennial and on later occasions. His recent publications include The Poetry of Piety: An Annotated Anthology of Christian Poetry, which he compiled with UNC alumnus Rev. Dr. Ben Witherington; and “Blue China and Blue Moods: Oscar Fashioning Himself at Oxford” in Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings and His World, ed. Robert N. Keane.
Publications
Dissertation:
“Louis MacNeice: A Biographical Account and a Study of his Prose Works,” 1967.
Books:
In progress, 2009 – 2011. Editor, Literary Ralegh and Visual Ralegh. (essays to be published by Manchester University Press).
The Poetry of Piety: An Annotated Anthology of Christian Poetry, with Rev. Ben
Witherington. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Books, 2002. 176 pp.
Anne Wilkinson. Toronto: ECW Press, 1989. 40 pp. Also in ECW Press series
Canadian Writers and Their Works, Poetry 6.
Sir Walter Ralegh, An Annotated Bibliography [1576-1986]. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1987. 236 pp.
A Bibliography of the Works of Louis MacNeice (co-author). London: Kaye & Ward
and Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1973; 2nd edn., 1974, 136 pp.
Manual of Service Writing for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Ottawa: The Queen’s
Printer, 1958. 200 pp.
Chapters in Books:
“Smartened Up by Lewis,” in C.S. Lewis Remembered, ed. Harry L. Poe, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 159-160.
“Blue China and Blue Moods: Oscar Fashioning Himself at Oxford,” in Oscar Wilde:The Man, His Writings, and his World, ed. Robert N. Keane (New York: AMS Press, 2003), 15-24.
“Indians in Canadian Literature in English, 1769 to the present” in Marginal Discourse, eds. Manuel Aguirre, Mercedes Bengoechea, and Robert K. Shepherd (Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Universidad Servicio de Publicaciones, 1993), 59-68.
“Echoing Prufrock,” Hall: Memoirs of St. Edmund Hall graduates 1920-1980, ed. Alan Jenkins (London: Farrand Press, 1989), 136-40.
“Fortune’s Tennis Ball: or Bouncing about with the Bibliography of Sir Walter,” Raleigh and Quinn: The Explorer and His Boswell, ed. H. G. Jones. (Chapel Hill: The North Caroliniana Society, 1987), 139-46.
“Mordecai Richler,” Essays on Contemporary Post-Colonial Fiction, ed. Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim (Munich: Max Hueber, 1986), 409-22.
“Ethel Wilson’s English Schooling and its Echoes in her Canadian Fiction,” The Ethel Wilson Symposium, ed. Lorraine McMullen (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1982), 19-26.
“The Letters of Duncan Campbell Scott to Lionel Stevenson,” The Duncan Campbell
Scott Symposium, ed. K. P. Stich (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1980), 111-12.
“Books by Louis MacNeice,” Time Was Away: The World of Louis MacNeice, ed.
Terence Brown and Alec Reid (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1974), 131-139.
Articles:
“Dr. Caius: Cambridge Scholar, Shakespearean Buffoon,” Notes and Queries, vol. 254, March 2009, 46-48.
“Indians in Canadian Literature in English, 1769 to the present” in Marginal Discourse, eds. Manuel Aguirre, Mercedes Bengoechea, and Robert K. Shepherd (Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Universidad Servicio de Publicaciones, 1993), 59-68.
“Classical Theatre in the Contemporary World,” Quarto of the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival 2(March 1992), 2.
All Quiet on the Western Front by R. M. Remarque, Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Fiction (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1991), 1:32-34.
The Paper Men by William Golding, Her Privates We by Frederic Manning, Shakespeare’s Dog by Leon Rooke, and The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters II. 4 vols. (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1989).
“Ernest Buckler,” “Alun Lewis,” “Hugh MacLennan,” and “Mordecai Richler” [biographical and critical essays], Cyclopedia of World Authors II. 4 vols. (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1989). 267-68, 930-31, 986-87, 1264-65.
“Canadian Literature in One American Context,” Literatures in Canada, ed. Deborah C. Poff, in Canadian Issues 10 No. 5 (1988), 93-96.
“Fred Perry” and “Sir Walter Raleigh,” Great Lives From History: British and Commonwealth Series. 5 vols. (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1987), 4:2088-92 and 2154-59.
Her Privates We by Frederic Manning and The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson [summaries and critiques] Masterplots II, British and Commonwealth Fiction Series. 4 vols. (Pasadena: Salem Press, 1987), 2:452-55 and 3:717-20.
“Gilt by Association,” Books in Canada, August 1985, 39-40.
“Introduction” to Slipping on the Verge: The Performing Arts in Canada by Mavor Moore (Wasington, D.C.: Canadian Embassy, 1983), 3.
“Louis MacNeice’s Prose Fiction,” The Honest Ulsterman, No. 73, September 1983, 86-95.
“Ethel Wilson’s English Schooling and its Echoes in her Canadian Fiction,” The Ethel Wilson Symposium, ed. Lorraine McMullen (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,1982), 19-26.
“The Lionel Stevenson Collection of Canadiana at Duke University,” The American Review of Canadian Studies 7 (1977), 51-59. Reprinted in Library Notes [Duke University] 48, December 1978, pp. 18-25.
“The New Literary History of Canada: A Review Essay,” The American Review of Canadian Studies 7 (1977), 101-107.
“The Canadian Playwrights Meet” (poem), Canadian Drama 2 (1976), 130.
“Books by Louis MacNeice,” Time Was Away: The World of Louis MacNeice, ed. Terence Brown and Alec Reid (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1974), 131-139.
“The Location of Lord Jim’s Patusan,” Notes and Queries 211 (1966), 409-410.
“Donne’s Poems in Huntington MS 198: New Light on `The Funeral’, “Studies in Philology 63 (1966), 697-707.
“Identification of New York Public Library MS ‘Suckling Collection’,” Studies in Bibliography 19 (1966), 215-16.
Book Reviews (selected):
Literary History of Canada, 2nd edn., vol. 4 (1990) in Margaret Laurence Newsletter 2 (1992), 7.
David G. Pitt, E. J. Pratt: The Master Years 1927-1964 in The American Review of Canadian Studies 18 (1988), 482-83.
Sandra Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F. R. Scott in The American Review of Canadian Studies 18 (1988), 387-88.
John Coldwell Adams, Sir Charles God Damn: The Life of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts in The American Review of Canadian Studies 17 (1987), 439-40.
Jerry Leath Mills, Sir Walter Raleigh: A Reference Guide in Albion 18 (Winter 1986),658-59.
David Pitt, E. J. Pratt: The Truant Years 1882-1927 in The American Review of Canadian Studies 15 (1985), 231-32.
H. Pearson Gundy, ed. Letters of Bliss Carman in The American Review of Canadian Studies 13 (1983), 145-146.
Charles David Wright, Clearing Away in The Chapel Hill Newspaper, 14 February 1982, p. 4c.
Dorothy Eagle and Hilary Carnell, The Oxford Literary Guide to the British Isles in The South Atlantic Quarterly 77 (1978), 263.
Carl F. Klinck, Robert Service: A Biography in The American Review of Canadian Studies 7 (1977), 99-100.
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory in Four Decades of Poetry: 1890-1930 2 (1977), 284-86.
Carol Bolt, Buffalo Jump; Gabe; Red Emma [plays] in The American Review of Canadian Studies 6 (1976), 131-33.
Jean Gould, Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement in Four Decades of Poetry: 1890-1930 1 (1976), 182-83.
Arthur E. Lane, An Adequate Response: The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in Modernist Studies 2 (1976), 58-59.
“[Recent] Literature: A Review Essay” in The American Review of Canadian Studies 5 (1975), 183-87.
Frederick Buell, W. H Auden as a Social Poet, and Richard Johnson, Man’s Place: An Essay on Auden in The South Atlantic Quarterly 74 (1975), 131-33.
Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades and Other Stories, in The Richmond Mercury: A Weekly Journal of News and the Arts, November 7, 1973, p. 14.
George Bahlke, The Later Auden, in The Journal of Modern Literature 1 (1971), 719-20.
Stanley Cooperman, World War I and the American Novel, and Michael Thorpe, Siegfried Sassoon: A Critical Study, in The South Atlantic Quarterly 68 (1969), 123-24, 140-41.
Theatre Criticism for The North Carolina Anvil: A Weekly Newspaper of Politics and the Arts, Autumn 1968.