William John Kennedy, the Avalon Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, died Jan. 16 at age of 82.
Kennedy taught the history of European literature and literary criticism from antiquity to the early modern period. His publications focused on Italian, French, English and German texts from Dante to Milton.
鈥淏ill Kennedy was one of the leading Renaissance scholars in the nation, a world expert on Petrarch and European Petrarchism, but he was also a central figure in the Department of Comparative Literature for many decades: a genial presences with a dry sense of humor, always ready to welcome new colleagues and help advise them in their careers,鈥 said Jonathan Culler, the Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus.
Kennedy鈥檚 publications include 鈥淩hetorical Norms in Renaissance Literature鈥 (Yale University Press, 1978); 鈥淛acopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral鈥 (University Press of New England, 1983), recipient of the MLA's Marraro Prize; 鈥淎uthorizing Petrarch鈥 (Cornell University Press, 1994); 鈥淭he Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern National Sentiment in Italy, France, and England鈥 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); and 鈥淧etrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare鈥 (Cornell University Press, 2016).
Kennedy also co-edited a rhetoric textbook, 鈥淲riting in the Disciplines鈥 (Prentice-Hall, seventh ed. 2012), and contributed more than 50 articles on literature, rhetoric and literary theory to various journals and critical collections.
鈥淏ill Kennedy was a renowned scholar of humanism,鈥 said Anindita Banerjee, associate professor of comparative literature. 鈥淏ut he was also that rarest of humans who so profoundly embodied the values and ethics of the humanist traditions that permeated his brilliant scholarship and enraptured his students.鈥
Kennedy received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Liguria foundations and served as President of the Renaissance Society of America from 2008-10.
In 2021, the Renaissance Society of America honored him with its honors 鈥渁 lifetime of uncompromising devotion to the highest standard of scholarship accompanied by exceptional achievement in Renaissance studies.鈥
Kennedy taught at Cornell from 1970 until his retirement in 2016 and was one of the first faculty members in the Department of Comparative Literature. His classes intersected several departments and programs: comparative literature, medieval studies, religious studies and Romance studies. He was instrumental in the establishment of the undergraduate major in comparative literature.
He was also co-founder of a highly successful and long-running interdisciplinary undergraduate lecture course, "The Cultures of the Renaissance," which became a model for cohesive interdisciplinary courses of general interest in the humanities, said Natalie Melas, associate professor of comparative literature.
鈥淗e was a reader, a scholar and a teacher endowed with a catholic curiosity and a deep, polyglot intellectual hospitality, again, in the best tradition of comparative literature as a border-crossing field,鈥 Melas said. 鈥淏ill was the one who shepherded me through the tenure process and that鈥檚 when I came to appreciate his profound perspicacity as a reader and his generous collegiality.鈥
鈥淏ill鈥檚 intellectual generosity and unfailing support for his students was a constant example for the rest of us,鈥 said Kathleen Perry Long, professor of French in the Romance studies department. 鈥淗e loved drama (in every sense), and one of my fondest memories of him was the opening lecture he gave in the Culture of the Renaissance course.鈥
In that lecture, Kennedy often offered dramatic and amusing tales that explained some of the obscure clich茅s still circulating today, Long said, such as 鈥渢hrowing the baby out with the bath water.鈥
鈥淥f course, when both water and heat were in short supply, many hundreds of years ago, everyone in the family would occasionally bathe, one at a time, in the same tub of water,鈥 Long said. 鈥淔irst the father, then the mother, then the oldest鈥own to the baby, the last to bathe. By then, the water was so dirty, that one had to be careful not to 鈥榯hrow the baby out with the bath water.鈥 He loved getting the students鈥 attention with such striking examples of the harshness of everyday life in the early modern world, even as he described the exquisite beauty and complexity of Petrarchan poetry, of Italian Renaissance Art, of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays, and of Montaigne鈥檚 essays.鈥
Kennedy received his undergraduate degree from Manhattan University and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Manhattan University in 2015.
Kennedy is survived by his wife, Mary Lynch Kennedy; his children, Liam Lynch Kennedy (Barbara Argyropoulos) and Maura Kennedy-Smith (Bill); his grandchildren, Nikoletta, Ronan, Andreas, Esme; and many lifelong friends. A celebration of his life is being planned for the spring.
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