Harold E. Lurier

Harold Edmond Lurier (September 28, 1923 – June 30, 2000) was an American historian, academic and translator. He was known for his translations of Greek poetry and Chronicle of the Morea.^[1]

Biography

Lurier was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. His paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish emigrants, and his maternal grandparents were Greek. After matriculating at Clark University in 1941, he served as a Greek interpreter for the U.S. Army during World War II from 1943 to 1946, then received his B.A. (1948), M.A. (1949) and Ph.D. (1955), in Medieval History, all at the University of Pennsylvania.

He first held an academic position at Princeton University, and then moved in 1956 to Pace University, where he spent the rest of his career in the Social Sciences Department. He retired in 1997.^[2][3][4]

Lurier won Pace's Kenan Award for Teaching Excellence in 1962.^[5] In the early 1970s, after tensions inflamed by a failed attempt to unionize the Pace faculty, Lurier collaborated with mathematician William J. Adams to develop the Lurier–Adams plan for faculty promotion and tenure decision-making at Pace.^[6]

Speculum praised his annotated translation of Chronicle of the Morea into English for its accuracy and for conveying "the flavor" of the Greek.^[7] Lurier is among a group of medievalists arguing that the original of the Chronicle was written in medieval French.^[7][8][9]

Lurier died in New York in 2000.

Bibliography

• Crusaders as Conquerors: The Chronicle of Morea, Columbia University Press (1964), ISBN 978-0-231-02298-9. This book is an annotated translation from the original Greekvverse version of Chronicle of the Morea (Greek: Το χρονικόν του Μορέως), a famous historical account of the Frankish principality of Morea in southern Greece, written in the 14th century.^[7][10]
• The Emergence of the Western World /Book, Maps and Prints , (1994). Paperback: 288 pages, Publisher: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company; Pap/Map edition (June 1994), ISBN 978-0-8403-9963-2
• Basic Facts of History of Western Civilization, Prehistory to 1600, 63 pages, general editor: John E. Flaherty. Published 1963 by Collier Books in New York .

References

1. "Obituaries". University of Pennsylvania Gazette. November–December 2000.
2. Adams, William J. (2008), "Harold E. Lurier: In Memoriam", Reflections on the University Scene, Xlibris Corporation.
3. Alumni obituaries, University of Pennsylvania Gazette, retrieved 2015-07-31.
4. Author biography from Lurier, Harold E. (2002), A History of the Religions of the World, Xlibris Corporation, rear cover, ISBN 9781401074081.
5. Kenan Award, Pace University, retrieved 2015-07-30.
6. Adams, William J. (2007), The Nitty-Gritty in the Life of a University, Xlibris Corporation, pp. 13–32, ISBN 9781425709143.
7. Topping, Peter (October 1965). "Crusaders as Conquerors: The Chronicle of Morea (book review)". Speculum (journal). 40 (4): 737. doi:10.2307/2851426. JSTOR 2851426.
8. Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1976), The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, American Philosophical Society, p. 156, ISBN 0871691140
9. Cheetham, Nicolas (1981), Mediaeval Greece, Yale University Press, p. 318, ISBN 9780300105391, H. E. Lurier ... argues strongly that both the Greek and the French versions are derived from a lost French prototype.
10. Crusaders as Conquerors is found in 594 libraries, according to WorldCat. It was reviewed by Topping , Peter (October 1965), Speculum 40 (4): 737–742, doi:10.2307/2851426, by Brundage, James A. (April 1966), Catholic Historical Review 52 (1): 112–113, and by Rathsack, Mogens (1971), Historisk Tidsskrift 12 (5): 505–506 (in Danish).