NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, July 6, 2018 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Fine poetry is the music of mathematics. Even when translated into other languages, it retains its precision, beauty and timelessness.

Anne Lake Prescott is the Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of English emeritus and Senior Scholar.at Barnard College and Columbia University where she has dedicated her career to the study of the English and French Renaissance and the exchange of ideas between the two movements. Dr. Prescott is the author of French Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation, many articles on Renaissance literature, and ten contributions to The Spenser Encyclopedia.

Now 82, Dr. Prescott says she’s nearing the end of her career, leaving behind a legacy of scholarship and a commitment to preserving the achievements of the past.

“I'm completely uncreative,” admits Dr. Prescott. “The last time I wrote a poem I was 13. I handed to my mother. She was an editor and author herself. She just looked at me sadly and just shook her head. I haven't written a poem since. But I write about them, which is fun and difficult.”

Dr. Prescott’s tenure coincided with the famous Columbia University protests of 1968.

“During the protests, some students took over the president of Columbia's office and urinated in his wastebasket. The professors at Columbia were not entirely displeased,” recalls Dr. Prescott. “It wasn't a time when values were being attacked so much as shifting. A shift away from behaving one's self, as in the '50s. We were trying to be good. But what is good changed. It was a shift away from trying to seem respectable to caring more about the poor, about race, about women.”

Still, Dr. Prescott had reservations. As former president of the John Donne Society, the Edmund Spenser Society and the Sixteenth Century Society, Dr. Prescott holds a deep affection for poetry and the literary tradition.

“The revolution that was going on was so negative about the past,” recalls Dr. Prescot. “Some of the changes scared me because the attitude was, ‘Forget about all that. It's over. Let's go on from here.’ And I was so terrified and sad because I thought in the future, nobody would care about what I love.”

But, Dr. Prescott says she was wrong about the future. Far from disappearing, Dr. Prescott’s computer keeps her in touch with John Donne scholars and French Renaissance scholars all over the world.

CUTV News Radio will feature Anne Lake Prescott in an interview with Doug Llewelyn on July 10th at 11am EDT.

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio.

If you have a question for our guest, call (347) 996-3389.

Lou Ceparano
CUTV News
(631) 850-3314
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