Kuhn, Reinhard

Reinhard Kuhn (1930-1980), professor of French, was born in Berlin, Germany, on September 6, 1930. He came to the United States as a boy and attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1952, his master of arts in 1954, and his Ph.D. in 1957, all from Princeton. He served in the Army from 1954 to 1956. He was assistant professor and later associate professor of French at the University of Kansas between 1959 and 1963, and professor of French at the University of Buffalo in 1963-64. He came to Brown in 1964 as professor of French. He was chairman of the Department of French Studies from 1967 to 1977. As a young man, he made a trip through the Midwest where, driving through what he described as “endless miles of grain fields and farmlands in the shimmering summer heat,” he felt “a tremendous lassitude, a deepening sense of numbness, of disconnection from reality ...” This condition led to his continuing interest in “boredom,” until, after collecting notes on the subject for years, he published a book on the subject entitled The Demon of Noontide: Ennui in Western Literature in 1977. He also published Return to Reality: A Study of Francis Viele-Griffin. His book, Corruption in Paradise: The Child in Western Literature, was published after his death. He was knighted by the French government and named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques, an honorary order of teachers and intellectuals. He died of “Legionnaire’s Disease” in Boston on November 7, 1980. At the time of his death he was engaged in the writing of another book, this one on the interrelationships between fiction and history in Western literature. At Commencement of 1981 he was awarded a posthumous senior citation.