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Service Set for English
Scholar Donald T. Torchiana
EVANSTON, Ill. --- A
memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. June 2 in Alice Millar Chapel
on the Northwestern University Evanston campus for Donald T. Torchiana
of Evanston, professor emeritus of English at Northwestern.
Mr. Torchiana, 77, died
May 9 in Wilton, Conn.
A member of the
Northwestern faculty from 1953 until his retirement in 1989, Mr.
Torchiana was a noted scholar in Irish Literature. He was the author
of "W.B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland," "Backgrounds
for Joyce’s Dubliners," and numerous articles, reviews
and essays.
Mr. Torchiana’s
research interests were in English, Irish and American literature,
with emphases on Eighteenth-Century English and Irish literature,
the Irish Literary Renaissance, modern literature and the writings
of Joyce, Yeats, Swift and Pope. At Northwestern he was president
of the Modern Language Club and director of the W.B. Yeats Festival.
During his career he edited many of Yeats’ letters and personal
papers.
He was a member of the
Irish Georgian Society, American Committee for Irish Studies, International
Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, Dublin Round
Table, Eighteenth-Century Studies Society of America and the Modern
Language Association.
He was a lecturer and
seminar director at the Yeats International Summer School and was
a Fulbright Lecturer at University College, Galway, and Trinity
College, Dublin, in Ireland.
A native of Swarthmore,
Penn., Mr. Torchiana was a captain and B-17 pilot in the U.S. 8th
Air Force during World War II and was awarded the Air Medal with
three Oak Leaf Clusters.
He received a bachelor’s
degree in English literature in 1947 from DePauw University and
was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was awarded a master’s in
English Literature in 1949 and a Ph.D. in English language and literature
in 1953 from the University of Iowa.
Mr. Torchiana is survived
by three children, Katherine T. Grenier of Weston, Conn.; Dr. David
F. Torchiana of Boston; William D. Torchiana of New York; eight
grandchildren; a brother, Jack of Tucson; and his former wife, Margarida
LeSueur of Nahant, Mass.
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