Peter Daly

Biographical Note

Born in 1936 in Bristol, England, I graduated from Bristol University with a First Class Honours B.A. in German and English in 1958, completing a University Certificate in Education a year later and my Dr. Phil. (magna cum laude) at the University of Zürich in Switzerland in 1963. Since 1964 I have taught at four Canadian universities, one American university, and have been a frequent lecturer and speaker in the U.S., England, Scotland, West Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Hungary.

At the University of Saskatchewan at Regina I was appointed to build up a program in German. I was Acting Chairman of Modern Languages (1967-8).

During my ten years at the University of Manitoba, I was laying the research foundation for later larger projects on Baroque literature and the European emblem. Two books were published which emerged from this work and formed the theoretical basis for my subsequent research: Literature in the Light of the Emblem (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979, revised and expanded 2nd ed. 1998), and Emblem Theory (Nendeln: KTO, 1979).

In 1978 I was appointed to the chair of German at McGill University, with the mandate to rebuild a divided department. This task has been accomplished.

In 1983 I was named to the Academic Advisory Panel of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the national granting agency for a wide range of disciplines in the faculties of arts, education, law and management. From 1984-7 I also served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities. For CFH I chaired a committee to study the research and funding needs of the humanities.

My research has become increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative. In my Index Emblematicus project seven folio sized reference books have thus far been published by the University of Toronto Press, and more are planned.

Together with a colleague at Pittsburgh I founded the journal Emblematica (New York: AMS Press) and a monographic series "AMS Studies in the Emblem." The journal is in its tenth year; eleven monographs have appeared. My other database project Union Catalogue of Emblem Books has collaborators in the North America and Europe. The results have been published by Saur (Munich), McGill-Queen's University Press and now by University of Toronto Press.

I recently launched with two European colleagues a new series "Imago Figurata" (Turnhout: Brepols). The first six volumes have already appeared and a further volume is in press.

In addition to work on various aspects of European baroque literature, and European emblem studies, I have begun investigating the use of word and image in modern advertising and modern political propaganda.

My research was recognized and supported by fellowships from the German Humboldt Stiftung (1976-77), and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1982), and the Konrad Adenauer Research Prize (1994).

I regard my appointment to the Chair of Excellence in Humanities at Chattanooga as both a recognition of my work in the humanities and as a significant experience. That year gave me time for reflection on a number of issues. From the large international conference I organized at Chattanooga on Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory an important volume of essays appeared recently: Peter M. Daly with John Manning (eds), Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory (New York: AMS Press, 1999). My series of public lectures as Humanities Chair provided me with the basis for a new course at McGill on "Images as ," and that it turn will become the subject of a new book onPublic Images as . In this way, teaching and research continue to be mutually supportive activities.

-1999