Larry Benson

alt=Larry Dean Benson pictured standing in front bookshelves at Harvard, ca. 1980.

Larry Dean Benson (1929–2015) was a Korean War veteran and professor of medieval literature at Harvard University. Serving twice as the dean of Harvard's Department of English, Benson was one of the most accomplished American medievalists of the twentieth century.

Early life and education

Born in 1929, Benson enlisted in the United States Marine Corps before completing high school, serving a five-year tour that included action in Korea during the invasion of 1950. After his service, he pursued an undergraduate degree at Arizona State University and earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1959.

Benson's scholarship focused on Old and Middle English literature. He wrote and edited numerous books, including Art and Tradition in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' (1965), King Arthur's Death: The Middle English 'Stanzaic Morte Arthur' and 'Alliterative Morte Arthure' (1974), and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1976). His most famous work, The Riverside Chaucer (1987), is the authoritative modern edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Benson served as the general editor, coordinating contributions from a network of scholars.

Contributions to digital humanities A pioneer in digital humanities, Benson recognized the potential of machine-readable texts before even the advent of the term itself. At a time when email was still a novelty, Benson taught himself to code Unix. After completing The Riverside Chaucer, Benson adapted the computer tapes into tools for teaching and research. This effort led to A Glossarial Concordance to 'The Riverside Chaucer' (1993) and the creation of The Geoffrey Chaucer Website. His Chaucer website, which went up in the 1990s, has accumulated over 83 million visits from students across the world since its launch in 2004.

Teaching and mentorship Benson was a dynamic lecturer whose Core course on The Canterbury Tales regularly drew hundreds of students. Teaching at Harvard from 1960 to his retirement in 1999, Benson taught everything from surveys to specialized seminars, even extending his tenure to teach at Harvard's Extension School until 2009. According to former students, Benson's teaching style was characterized by nervous energy, pacing, jingling coins in his pockets; through his own penetrating intelligence he was able to convey the brilliance, humor, and humanity of Chaucer.