As a student of D.W. Robertson Jr.'s, both undergraduate and graduate, I wish to second my classmate Robin Boone's demurral from the application of the epithet "terrifying." It was under Robbie's influence that I became a medievalist. The fact that I was an unapologetic "Robertsonian" actually cost me a number of academic job opportunities, since at the time, his ideas about medieval art and literature were widely regarded as far-fetched and doctrinaire. Fortunately, my Robertsonianism was not held against me by the English Department at Swarthmore, which offered me my first college teaching position fresh out of Princeton's newly fledged graduate Program in Comparative Literature. Far from being "terrifying," Robbie was unfailingly friendly and had a wonderful sense of humor. He often accompanied his delivery of passages from "The Canterbury Tales" with a hearty belly laugh I still hear clearly in my mind's ear.
In Response to: Arthur R. Boone ’60