I don’t have anything in mind, but (for a game I’m planning), I’d like to have a fictional character (preferably from a novel) who is a professor of literature (or equivalent), preferably NOT the protagonist but a minor or secondary character.
And I need someone who is NOT a negative force. There are plenty of college professors in books who are pompous fools, or whose role is to misunderstand the protagonist and cause difficulties, etc. I’m looking for an Obi-Wan, a Mentor, a positive influence on the protagonist.
It’s not much, but there is this list. Professor Kirke was definitely a minor character (well, except for The Magician’s Nephew, but he wasn’t a professor yet anyway) and also a positive influence, but sadly he was a professor of history. Professor Fen was the main character in a detective novel.
Thanks, Basandre – an amusing list, but far from complete. An obvious omission is David Kepesh, the professor of literature in several of Philip Roth’s books. But it’s a start. Thanks.
Elwin Ransom, the hero of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, was a professor of literature, much like Lewis and his friend JRR Tolkien.
In all of William F. Buckley’s spy novels, secret agent Blackford Oakes has a girlfriend (later wife) named Sally Partridge, who’s an English professor specializng in Jane Austen.
In Michael Chabon’s novel Wonder Boys, Grady Tripp (played by Michael Douglas in the movie version) was a once-successful novelist who is now an English professor.
Oh… this is a play (later a movie), not a novel… but isn’t Professor Frank Bryant a positive influence on the blue collar British housewife in Educating Rita?
David Lodge’s (wonderful) novels about academe are of professors, some of whom are sympathetic: SMALL WORLD, NICE WORK, CHANGING PLACES, etc. Also Robertson Davies’ DEPTFORD TRILOGY is partly narrated by a wise and sympathetic history proffesor. John Williams’ novel STONER is a very sympathetic portrait of a professor.
There’s the heroine’s adviser, Dr. Saul Burlem, in Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y. I don’t remember that much about his personality, but he’s one of the good guys and does serve as a mentor for Ariel.
If your game would involve any sort of conspiracy, travel to alternate worlds, or time travel then this character would be an especially appropriate choice.
But Pangloss is neither a professor nor a teacher of literature per se–he’s more of a philosophic emblem than someone in an academic institution, isn’t he?
From Heinlein, Prof. de la Paz was a professor of anything you wanted to learn from him, even if he had to learn it himself the day before he taught it to you, and I’m sure he knew plenty of literature. I don’t think he was exactly accredited, though.
I know you said ‘preferably from a novel’, but what about John Keating, Robin Williams’ character from ‘Dead Poets Society’? Other than the fact that it’s from an original screenplay instead of a novel, that’s a pretty inspirational professor of literature.
The movie Stranger than Fiction has a character who meets your description exactly, except that he’s in a movie rather than a novel. I’m blanking on the name at the moment but you could look it up on the IMDB.