By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Stephen Owen, known for his work on Chinese literature as well as for his probing and masterful comparative studies, has been named the James Bryant Conant University Professor.

Owen's specialty is the T'ang Dynasty (618-906 A.D.), the age of the great lyric poets, Wang Wei and Du Fu. But his scholarly reach extends to all periods of Chinese literature and into other literatures as well. Owen has also made his mark as a translator.

"Stephen Owen is a remarkable and versatile scholar, with a truly exceptional sense of literary quality and an ability to help his students and readers understand the most distinctive aspects of the literature he teaches and writes about," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "His book Remembrances offers as lucid and sensitive a reading of Chinese poetry as we are likely ever to find. Harvard is fortunate to be able to welcome him to the ranks of University Professors."

Helen Vendler, the Kingsley Porter University Professor, known for her criticism of 20th-century poetry, said that Owen is

"a person of indefatigable mental energy and deep poetic sensibility. In his translations, he neither betrays what is original in the poem nor imposes anything foreign on it. He conveys the warmth and personality of the poem as well as its literal meaning."

Chinese History Professor Peter Bol said that Owen, "in terms of his career and level of accomplishment, is in a class by himself. Certainly he's the most important person in the study of Chinese literature in the West."

Owen said that he regards the Conant Professorship as a great honor as well as a recognition of the importance of the humanities and of East Asian studies.

"I'm also grateful for the opportunity to think about my field more broadly," he said. "I will continue to teach in the East Asian department, but I am also a member of the Comparative Literature department, and I would like to start thinking about doing more comparative courses."

Born in St. Louis, Owen, 51, grew up in Arkansas and Maryland. His interest in Chinese literature took root when he began to explore the Baltimore public library as an adolescent.

"I became enamored of books of poetry and especially of Chinese poetry in translation, and I have been ever since. I wrote poetry when I was younger, but then I discovered that I was better at writing prose, particularly literary criticism," he said.

Owen earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Yale University. He taught at Yale from 1972 to 1982, when he joined the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences as professor of Chinese literature. Before becoming a University Professor, he was the Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature and professor of Chinese.

Owen is the author of numerous articles and books on Chinese literature and comparative literary subjects. These include: The Poetry of the Early T'ang (1977); The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T'ang (1980); Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: An Omen of the World (1985); Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature (1986); and Mi-Lou: Poetry and the Labyrinth of Desire (1989).

Owen's most recent book, An Anthology of Chinese Literature (Norton & Co., 1996), is a 1,200-page tome spanning 2,500 years. Owen translated the hundreds of selections almost entirely himself, in addition to writing the notes and critical introductions.

University Professorships are awarded to "individuals of distinction not definitely attached to any particular department." The special category of professorships was created in 1935, and today, they are held by 14 Harvard faculty members.

In 1974, the Harvard Corporation established the James Bryant Conant University Professorship to honor Harvard's 23rd president, who held office from 1933 to 1953. It was held by Kenneth Arrow (economics) from 1974 to 1979, and by philosopher John Rawls from 1979 to 1991. It has been vacant since Rawls' retirement.