Joan Turville-Petre

• 1. A Wedding Without Guests

  ›

  Joan Turville-Petre, an English philologist, was married on the 7th of January 1943 with no guests in attendance. Two friends did stand beside the couple as witnesses: J. R. R. Tolkien and his wife Edith. The groom, Gabriel Turville-Petre, was a fellow Oxford academic working in the same field as his bride. A ceremony that small says something about the circle she moved in. Who was Joan Turville-Petre, what languages and texts did she devote her working life to, and what did she leave behind in print?

  234

• 2. Somerville Years

  ›

  On the 10th of May 1911, Joan Elizabeth Blomfield was born, the daughter of Sam Blomfield and Kate Barton of Colchester, Essex. In 1930 she began her studies at Somerville College, Oxford University. That choice shaped the rest of her working life, because she kept a connection with the college until she died. Her posts there changed over the decades. She served as Tutor and Fellow from 1941 to 1946, then as a lecturer in English from 1946 to 1965. From 1965 she held the title of Honorary College Research Fellow, and she kept it for the remaining forty-one years of her life. That final title reveals how long her scholarship continued after her teaching career ended.

  134

• 3. Norse and Old English Scholarship

  ›

  In the Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, a paper titled "Runes and the Gothic alphabet" appeared across the volume covering 1937 to 1945. It was the earliest item in a long run of articles on early northern languages and literature. She specialized in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies, and her subjects ranged widely. In 1947 she examined the manuscript of the Ormulum in the Journal of English and German Philology. A study called "Hengest and Horsa" followed in the Saga-Book for 1953 to 1957. Homilies drew her attention next. In 1960 she wrote on the sources of the vernacular homily in England, Norway and Iceland. In 1963 the journal Traditio published her translations of a lost penitential homily. Later work turned to poetry and saga. She wrote on the metre of Icelandic court poetry in 1966-69, and then paired Beowulf with Grettis saga in an essay for the 1974-77 volume. Her last listed article, in the volume for 1978-81, asked how genealogists and history related, from Ari to Snorri.

  4

• 4. Editor and Translator

  ›

  In 1981, Clarendon Press in Oxford issued the Old English poem "Exodus", with a text, translation and commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien. Joan Turville-Petre edited the volume. Her role there was to prepare another scholar's work for readers. Translation became a second strand of her output. In 1983, Odense University Press published her English version of The unmanly man, a study of sexual defamation in early northern society by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen. In 1998 she shared a translation credit with Terry Gunnell on Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson's A Piece of Horse Liver. That book examines myth, ritual and folklore in Old Icelandic sources, and it appeared when she was in her late eighties.

  4

• 5. Family and Farewell

  ›

  On the 6th of January 1944, the couple's first son, Thorlac Francis Samuel, was born. Merlin Oswald followed on the 2nd of July 1946. Brendan Arthur Auberon, the youngest, was born on the 16th of September 1948. He died on the 6th of December 1981, aged 33, while his mother was still working and publishing. Joan Turville-Petre herself died on the 9th of March 2006, at the age of 94. Her funeral took place on the 23rd of March 2006 at St Michael's in Aylsham.

  34