Professor, Department of English
1987
Bio:
Robert Reilly was born in August 1925 in Detroit, Michigan. After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, he received his Ph.B. and M.A. in English degrees from the University of Detroit and his Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University. His dissertation, entitled Romantic Religion: A Study of Barfield, Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien, explored the writings and impact of Barfield and Tolkien before their writings were in print in the United States.
Robert Reilly joined the University of Detroit as an English instructor in 1957, and was promoted to assistant professor, associate professor and then full professor. He served as co-chairman of the Graduate Committee, working with doctoral and master’s degree candidates. He also taught American Literature courses at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He also taught a course on the English Romantic poets at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, in the summer of 1976.
His primary areas of focus were American Literature and Literary Criticism, which he taught for 33 years. His special research interest has been the development of the American character.
Dr. Reilly’s “Tolkien and the Fairy Story” appeared in Thought, the Fordham University Quarterly, in Spring 1963, followed by “God, Man and Literature” in Winter 1967 in Thought.
His essay “Henry James and the Morality of Fiction” won the Norman Foerster Award as the best essay to appear in American Literature in 1967 and was reprinted in On Henry James: The Best from American Literature in 1990 by Duke University Press.
His other scholarly writings include “Owen Barfield: Symbol and Teacher,”originally published by Quest magazine, and he is considered one of the seminal Barfield scholars. His essay “Tolkien and the Fairy Story” was reprinted in Tolkien and the Critics (1968).
His book Romantic Religion: A Study of Barfield, Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien (1971) was selected by the Modern Language Association for inclusion in its Scholar’s Library. Romantic Religion was reissued by Steiner Books in 2006.
In 1976, Dr. Reilly and James T. Callow, Ph.D., fellow English Professor at the University of Detroit co-authored Guide to American Literature from Beginnings through Walt Whitman and, in 1977, Guide to American Literature from Emily Dickinson to the Present.
Also in 1976, he was invited to submit an essay entitled “A Note on Barfield, Romanticism, and Time” to Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity by Shirley Sugerman and published by Wesleyan University Press.
The first of Dr. Reilly’s fictional pieces to be published was “Ars Gratia Artis” in Southern Humanities Review in Fall 1982.
When Dr. Reilly retired from teaching at University of Detroit in 1987, he was honored with the Professor Emeritus title by Fr. Robert A. Mitchell, S.J., President of University of Detroit on February 28,1987. Since retirement, he has continued to write fiction and is at work on a scholarly examination of the development of the American character.
Dr. Reilly entered eternal life on May 10, 2016.