Mignon, Charles W. 1933-

views updated

MIGNON, Charles W. 1933-

PERSONAL: Born December 11, 1933, in New York, NY; son of C. W. (a schedule engineer) and Dorothy Burgess (Congdon) Mignon; married Mary Ann Killian, December 21, 1959; children: Paul Killian, Edward Taylor. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Kenyon College, B.A., 1956; University of Connecticut, M.A., 1959, Ph.D., 1963. Politics: Democrat. Religion: "Agnostic." Hobbies and other interests: U.S. Tennis Association umpire.

ADDRESSES: Home—2129 South 35th St., Lincoln, NE 68506-6010. Offıce—Department of English, 315 Andrews Hall, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0333; fax 402-472-1919. E-mail— cmignon@earthlink.net.


CAREER: University of Connecticut, Storrs, instructor, 1963; University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, assistant professor, 1963-67; University of Nebraska—Lincoln, assistant professor, 1967-69, associate professor, 1969-73, professor of English, 1973—. University of Warsaw, senior Fulbright lecturer, 1972-73; lecturer at Jagellonian University, 1973. Appeared as Arvide Abernathy in the play Guys and Dolls, produced at Pinewood Bowl Summer Theater, 1982. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1956-58.


MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, American Literature Association, Society for Textual Scholarship, Society of Early Americanists, Midwest Modern Language Association, Western Literature Association.


AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1983-84, 1994, 1997; grants from Nebraska Committee for the Humanities, 1984, 1985; CSE Seal, Committee for Scholarly Editions, Modern Language Association of America, 1985, for Upon the Types of the Old Testament, 1989, for O Pioneers!, 1992, for My Antonia, 1995, for A Lost Lady, and 1997, for Death Comes for the Archbishop; Annis Chaikin Sorensen Award, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, for university-wide teaching, 1993; Nicholas E. Powell Award, U.S. Tennis Association, 1997, for work as a sectional umpire.


WRITINGS:

(With James L. Roberts) Emerson's Essays: Notes, Cliffs Notes (Lincoln, NE), 1975.

(Editor) Edward Taylor, Upon the Types of the Old Testament, two volumes, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1989.

(Editor, with Susan Rosowski) Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1992.

(Editor, with Kari A. Ronning) Willa Cather, My Antonia, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1994.

(Editor, with Kari A. Ronning and Frederick Link) Willa Cather, A Lost Lady, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1997.

(Editor, with Kari A. Ronning and Frederick Link) Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.


Contributor to books, including Pat Hutchings, editor, The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance Practice and Improve Student Learning, AAHE (Washington, DC), 1998; contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including New England Quarterly, Studies in Puritan American Spirituality, Studies in Short Fiction, William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Literature, and Studies in the Novel.


SIDELIGHTS: Charles W. Mignon told CA: "As an editor, my work began in earnest with the discovery of the Nebraska Edward Taylor manuscript 'Upon the Types of the Old Testament,' a holograph manuscript dating from the 1690s consisting of thirty-six sermons. The transcription of this material, with the collection of marginal notes, explanatory notes, and textual emendations took ten years; the proofreading of the printer's copy took two years. The two-volume edition was published with an introduction in 1989. The original manuscript found its way from Edward Taylor's library at his death to his daughter, Ruth Colton, to another daughter, Keziah, and then to her son Ezra Stiles, thence to Henry Wyllys Taylor, to his nephew James Henry Taylor, to his second wife, Harriet Terry Taylor, to her daughter Jennie, and thence to her granddaughter, Corinne Shewell Gilligan, who donated it to the library at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln in 1978. My edition of the manuscript represents some of my best work, as does the edition of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. My other academic interests are in literary criticism and post-secondary education.


"In retirement I have continued my work as textual editor for the "Cather Scholarly Edition" series, editing My Mortal Enemy, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, and Youth and the Bright Medusa."

More From encyclopedia.com