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Samuel G. Armistead
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Samuel G. Armistead
Samuel Gordon Armistead (August 21, 1927 – August 7, 2013) was an American ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, historian, literary critic and professor of Spanish. He is considered one of the most notable Hispanist scholars of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century.
Samuel Gordon Armistead was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. His mother, Elizabeth Tucker Russell Armistead, was a historian and student of foreign languages; and he had, at least, one brother, Harry Armistead. He came from a family of lawyers and bankers. As a teenager, Armistead suffered an accident with explosives that caused the loss of an eye and some fingers.
He graduated from Penn Charter School in 1945. Afterwards he spent six months in the U.S. Merchant Marine and traveled to France and the Caribbean. Guided by his desire to learn Spanish (the language having attracted him since his adolescence), he lived in Cuba, where he had relatives and friends, for several seasons, studying and perfecting his Spanish. His stay in Cuba also whetted his appetite for Hispanic literature and culture.
Beginning in the fall of 1945 he studied Spanish literature at Princeton University, receiving his doctorate in Spanish literature and Romance languages in 1955 with a thesis entitled "La gesta de las mocedades de Rodrigo: Reflections of a Lost Epic Poem in the Cronica de los Reyes de Castilla and the Cronica General de 1344", written under the direction of Américo Castro.
By this time he had begun his teaching career at Princeton (1953–1955). Ultimately he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (1956 - 1967), Purdue University in Indiana, (1967 - 1968), the University of Pennsylvania (1968 - 1982), and the University of California, Davis, where he taught from 1982 until his death in 2013.
In 1957, Armistead initiated a collaborative project to collect, edit and study the massive body of Hispanic oral literature from a comparative literature perspective. He worked closely with another eminent Hispanist scholar, Joseph H. Silverman (1924–1989), and the musicologist Israel J. Katz (born 1930), with both of whom he developed an extensive body of work that focused primarily on the oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco and the East. He also worked closely with Hispanist Manuel da Costa Fontes on studies focusing especially on the oral traditions of Portugal and Brazil.
Beginning in 1975, Sam Armistead conducted a field study on the Hispanic linguistics of Spanish colonial communities in Louisiana, communities that have existed in that state since the 18th century and still do. The book he published from that study is The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana (1992). More recently he was engaged in researching additional aspects of Louisiana Spanish and its oral literature.
Between 2000 and 2002 he was co-chair of the Departments of Spanish and Classics at the University of California, Davis. In 2003 he published a six-volume collection of Portuguese traditional romances from the Azores Islands, and he was at work on subsequent volumes. at the time of his death. He retired in 2010 from UC Davis, as professor emeritus.
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Samuel G. Armistead
Samuel Gordon Armistead (August 21, 1927 – August 7, 2013) was an American ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, historian, literary critic and professor of Spanish. He is considered one of the most notable Hispanist scholars of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century.
Samuel Gordon Armistead was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. His mother, Elizabeth Tucker Russell Armistead, was a historian and student of foreign languages; and he had, at least, one brother, Harry Armistead. He came from a family of lawyers and bankers. As a teenager, Armistead suffered an accident with explosives that caused the loss of an eye and some fingers.
He graduated from Penn Charter School in 1945. Afterwards he spent six months in the U.S. Merchant Marine and traveled to France and the Caribbean. Guided by his desire to learn Spanish (the language having attracted him since his adolescence), he lived in Cuba, where he had relatives and friends, for several seasons, studying and perfecting his Spanish. His stay in Cuba also whetted his appetite for Hispanic literature and culture.
Beginning in the fall of 1945 he studied Spanish literature at Princeton University, receiving his doctorate in Spanish literature and Romance languages in 1955 with a thesis entitled "La gesta de las mocedades de Rodrigo: Reflections of a Lost Epic Poem in the Cronica de los Reyes de Castilla and the Cronica General de 1344", written under the direction of Américo Castro.
By this time he had begun his teaching career at Princeton (1953–1955). Ultimately he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (1956 - 1967), Purdue University in Indiana, (1967 - 1968), the University of Pennsylvania (1968 - 1982), and the University of California, Davis, where he taught from 1982 until his death in 2013.
In 1957, Armistead initiated a collaborative project to collect, edit and study the massive body of Hispanic oral literature from a comparative literature perspective. He worked closely with another eminent Hispanist scholar, Joseph H. Silverman (1924–1989), and the musicologist Israel J. Katz (born 1930), with both of whom he developed an extensive body of work that focused primarily on the oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco and the East. He also worked closely with Hispanist Manuel da Costa Fontes on studies focusing especially on the oral traditions of Portugal and Brazil.
Beginning in 1975, Sam Armistead conducted a field study on the Hispanic linguistics of Spanish colonial communities in Louisiana, communities that have existed in that state since the 18th century and still do. The book he published from that study is The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana (1992). More recently he was engaged in researching additional aspects of Louisiana Spanish and its oral literature.
Between 2000 and 2002 he was co-chair of the Departments of Spanish and Classics at the University of California, Davis. In 2003 he published a six-volume collection of Portuguese traditional romances from the Azores Islands, and he was at work on subsequent volumes. at the time of his death. He retired in 2010 from UC Davis, as professor emeritus.