A.B. University of Washington, 1945; Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1948; A.M. (hon.) Harvard, 1959.

Instructor classics, Amherst, 1948-55; asso. prof., 1955-59; professor Greek and Latin, Harvard, 1959-82; Victor S. Thomas Professor of Greek and Latin, 1982-88; Pope Professor of Latin Language & Literature, 1988-93; prof. comparative literature, 1984-93; chair, Department of classics, 1966-71; vis. prof., University College, London, 1971; Sather professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1982; vis. prof., I Tatti, Florence, Italy, 1989; fell. AAR, 1952-3; ACLS, 1962-63; fellow commoner, Peterhouse, Cambridge; fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1963.

"Erchanberti Frisigensis 'Tractatus super Donatum' " (Chicago, 1948).

"The Scorched Earth Policy, Ancient and Modern," CJ 40 (1945) 298-99; “Bede and the British Pearl,” CJ 42 (1947) 277-280; “Notes on Sallust's Historiae,” AJP 68 (1947) 293-301; “Lucretius I,777,” AJP 70 (1949) 309-10; “ Phaedra 1025,” AJP 70 (1949) 313-15; “Culex 364,” AJP 70 (1949) 310-12; “Codex Vat. Reginensis 1560 of Persius,” TAPA 80 (1949) 238-44; “Two Notes on Juvenal,” CR n.s. 1 (1951) 73-74; “Silva coniecturarum,” AJP 76 (1955) 47-62; “Schraderiana,” Mnemosyne 8(1955) 49-52; Saturarum liber, accedit Vita (ed.) (Oxford, 1956) REVS: REL XXXIV 1956 380 Perret | JRS XLVII 1957 286 Nisbet | CR N.S. VII 1957 226-228 Kenney | AAHG X 1957 281 Jax | GIF X 1957 361-365 Scivoletto | Phoenix XI 1957 175 Mackay | Latomus XVI 1957 356-357 Verdière | RPh XXXII 1958 173-174 Ernout | AC XXVI 1957 472 Herrmann | G&R V 1958 90 | Gnomon XXXII 1960 119-128 Seel | Mnemosyne XIV 1961 373-376 Enk; A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuvenalis Saturae (ed.) (Oxford, 1959; 2nd ed., 1992) REVS: Latomus XXII 1963 102 Préaux | RBPh XXXIX 1961 999 | CPh LVI 1961 138 Helmbold | GIF XIV 1961 179-181 Marmorale | Gnomon XXXIII 1961 167-169 O'Neil | CR XI 1961 51-58 Griffith | AJPh LXXXII 1961 428-441 Anderson | JRS LII 1962 233-238 Nisbet | Mnemosyne XV 1962 204 Enk | REL XXXVII 1959 353 Bardon | CW LIII 1960 262 Schnur | LEC XXVIII 1960 110 Bourmont | RPh XXXIV 1960 321-322 Ernout | RFIC XXXVIII 1960 423-425 Frassinetti | AC XXIX 1960 210-212 van Looy | REL LXX 1992 283-284 J. Gérard | G&R XXXIX 1992 232 Fowler | Latomus LI 1992 927 H. Bardon; “An Interpolated Verse in Horace,” Philologus 106 (1962) 205-6; “Sabinus Ms. of Persius,” Hermes 91 (1963) 252-56; “ Crater cratera craterra,” CQ 13 (1963) 85-87; “Two Conjectures,” AJP 84 (1963) 415-17; “Concava verba,” CP 59 (1964) 38; “An Interpretation of the Aeneid,” HSCP 68 (1964) 139-47; “On Editing the Ciris,” CP 59 (1964) 90-101; “The Textual Tradition of the Culex,” HSCP 68 (1964) 119-38; “Callimachus and Latin Poetry,” GRBS 5 (1964) 181-96; Lucretius. On the Nature of Things, trans. H.A.J. Munro, intro. by Clausen (New York, 1965); Appendix Vergiliana, ed. Clausen, F.R.D. Goodyear, E.J. Kenney & J.A. Richmond (Oxford, 1966) REVS: REL XLIV 1966 461 Perret | P & I VIII 1966 Nos 29-30 86 Frassinetti | PVS V 1965-1966 53-55 Eden | CW LX 1966 20 Bateman ; RPh XLI 1967 109-115 Ernout | CR XVII 1967 42-46 Courtney | AC XXXVI 1967 670-672 Verdière | Gnomon XL 1968 259- 268 Westendorp Boerma | CPh LXIII 1968 247-251 Doeblin | RFIC XCVI 1968 339-354 Cazzaniga; “Cato, De agri cult. 14, 5,” Philologus 110 (1966) 306-7; “Adnotatiunculae in Servium,” HSCP 71 (1966) 57-58; “Statius, Thebaid x,299,” Philologus 111 (1967) 146; “Catullus and Callimachus,” HSCP 74 (1970) 85-94; “ Duellum,” HSCP 75 (1971) 69-72; “On the Date of the First Eclogue,” HSCP 76 (1972) 201-6; “Propertius 4.11.53,” AJP 96 (1975) 271; “Catulli Veronensis liber,” CP 71 (1976) 37-43; “On Seneca the Elder, Suas. 5.2,” AJP 97 (1976) 1-2; “Cynthius,” AJP 97 (1976) 245-47; “Juvenal and Virgil,” HSCP 80 (1976) 181-86; “Virgil and Parthenius,” HSCP 80 (1976) 179; “Ariadne's Leave-Taking. Catullus 64.116-20,” ICS 2 (1977) 219-23; “Cynthius. An Addendum,” AJP 98 (1977) 362; “Ovid, Met. 15.90,” AJP 100 (1979) 247-49; The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, II : Latin Literature, ed. E.J. Kenney & Clausen (Cambridge, 1982) REVS: LCM VII 1982 102-108 Woodman | TLS LXXXI 1982 966 Sullivan; Gnomon LVI 1984 103-107 & Gymnasium XCI 1984 547-548 von Albrecht; CompLit XXXIV 1984 362-364 Anderson; CJ LXXIX 1984 368-371 Goldberg; LEC LII 1984 86 Wankenne; DLZ CV 1984 126-129 Hering; EClás XXVII 1985 N° 89 448-455 Ramírez de Verger; Mnemosyne XXXVIII 1985 222-228 Hijmans Jr; CPh LXXXI 1986 173-179 Setaioli; “Cicero and the New Poetry,” Ciceroniana 5 (1984) 91-100; “Cicero and the New Poetry,” HSCP 90 (1986) 159-170; Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry, Sather Classical Lectures 51 (Berkeley, 1987) REVS: Vergilius XXXIII 1987 114-118 Newman ; GIF XXXIX 1987 246-250 Privitera ; BStudLat XVIII 1988 124-127 Horsfall ; AJPh CX 1989 171-177 Galinsky ; CW LXXXII 1988-1989 325-326 Gross ; NECN XV, 1 1987 48-49 Beye ; JRS LXXIX 1989 204-206 Harrison ; TLS LXXXVI 1987 722 Feeney ; CPh LXXXIV 1989 354-358 Hardie ; REL LXV 1987 329-330 Novara ; JCS XXXVI 1988 98-101 Oshiba ; RFIC CXVIII 1990 211-214 Traina; “Catulliana,” in Vir bonus discendi peritus. Studies in Celebration of Otto Skutsch's Eightieth Birthday, ed. Nicholas Horsfall (London, 1988) 13-17; Historia de la literatura clásica (Cambridge University) II : Literatura latina ed. E.J. Kenney & Clausen, trans. Elena Bombín (Madrid, 1989) REVS: Habis 21 1990 269-272; "Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors," Vergilius 35 (1989) 3-7; G. Laguna Mariscal; “Philology,” CLS 27 (1990) 13-15; “Virgil's Messianic Eclogue,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition, ed. James L. Kugel (Ithaca, NY, 1990) 65-74; “Three Notes on Lucretius,” CQ 41 (1991) 544-45; A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues (New York, 1994) REVS: AJP 1996 117 (2): 332-335 James J. O'Hara | BMCRev 1995 6 (8): 681-685 James J. Clauss | CJ 1995-1996 91 (4): 425-427 Thomas K. Hubbard | CO 1995-1996 73 (2): 77 Michael Ridgway Jones | CR 1996 N. S. 46 (1): 18-19 Monica R. Gale | Euphrosyne 1995 23: 507-510 Paulo Farmhouse Alberto | Gnomon 1997 69 (8): 720-722 Ernst August Schmidt | Hermathena 1996 161: 96-98 Gordon Williams | JRS 1995 85: 320-321 R. G. M. Nisbet | Latomus 1997 56 (2): 421-422 R. Leclercq | LEC 1997 65 (3): 267-268 Jacques Filée | MH 1995 52 (4): 247 Josef Delz | NECN 1995-1996 23 (1): 32-33 Peter L. Smith | REL 1995 73: 261 Roger Lesueur | Vergilius 1995 41: 114-133 John Van Sickle | CW 1997-1998 91 (5): 420-421 David A. Traill; “Horace, Sermones 2.3.208,” Mnemosyne 48 (1995) 202-3; “Decorum in the Aeneid,” AVM 63 (1995) 19-27; “Propertius 2.32.35-36,” HSCP 100 (2000) 423; Virgil's Aeneid: Decorum, Allusion and Ideology (Munich, 2002) REVS: BMCRev 2002 (10): n.p. Barbara Weiden Boyd | JRS 2003 93: 368-370 Sergio Casali | REL 2003 81: 382 Antoinette Novara | Gnomon 2004 76 (7): 636-637 Lucienne Deschamps | Ordia prima 2004 3: 219-222 Julián Aubrit | Vergilius 2004 50: 170-175 Alexander G. McKay | RPh 2005 3e sér. 79 (1): 214-216 Mathilde Mahé-Simon; Commentum Cornuti in Persium, ed. Clausen & James E. G. Zetzel (Munich, 2004) REVS: AC 2007 76: 356-357 Bruno Rochette | Arctos 2005 39: 237 Heikki Solin | BMCRev 2007 (2): n. p. Robert Scott Smith | ExClass 2006 10: 393-401 Martin Hellmann | Gnomon 2007 79 (1): 41-46 Claudia Wiener

Throughout the thirty-four years of his tenure at Harvard University Wendell Clausen was one of the most influential teachers of Latin poetry in the professional world of classical studies.  He exercised this influence not by the imposition of a method, nor by proselytizing for the works he admired, but through a powerful, deeply personal appeal that arose out of his own intense devotion to the world of letters and the life of the mind.  Clausen’s commitment to literature developed early in life and it was not limited to the Greek and Latin classics—his choice of career was almost an accident after studying both English and Classics as an undergraduate at the University of Washington.  After receiving his BA in 1945 he began his eastward migration to pursue his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, with its great legacy in classical studies, for which Clausen retained a high regard throughout his career (he was never mesmerized by Harvard).  He earned his PhD in only three years, with a dissertation on a medieval grammatical treatise, a topic that only appears implausible against the backdrop of his later career. 

His first professional appointment took him still farther east, away from his roots in Oregon to Amherst College, where he taught from 1948 to 1959.  It was during these years that he achieved a reputation unique in American classical circles at the time.  His first major publication was an edition of Persius, published in 1956 by Oxford University Press, which attracted the attention of British academics unaccustomed to acknowledging textual scholarship from across the Atlantic.  This was followed in 1959 by an edition of Persius and Juvenal for the Oxford Classical Texts, the first volume by an American scholar in that prestigious series.  In the same year Clausen moved to Harvard University, where he remained until his retirement in 1993.  He contributed editions of four minor poems ascribed to Virgil in the OCT of the Appendix Vergiliana, which appeared in 1966, but this was almost the last tangible sign of his involvement with poets whose works he did not cherish. In the years that followed it was the poets of the late Republic and the Augustan period—Horace, Lucretius, Catullus and his contemporaries—with whom Clausen was engaged, but always and above all, Virgil.

For a scholar of so wide a reputation and such profound influence, Clausen published only occasionally and in articles that are distinguished by the same qualities that he valued in literature: precise attention to verbal detail, concision sometimes almost to the point of obscurity, and emotional suggestiveness that never quite finds its way to outright expression. “An Interpretation of the Aeneid,” arguably his most influential paper, which appeared in 1963, is a case in point.  In ten brief pages Clausen outlines a reading of the Aeneid that became a landmark in twentieth-century criticism of the epic.  It offers a darker interpretation of Virgil’s hero than the one then prevailing in England and on the continent, and led to Clausen’s inclusion in what some called the “Harvard school” of Virgilian criticism, an appellation later debunked by him in an appendix to Nicholas Horsfall’s A Companion to the Study of Virgil (1995).  But from this point on, it was indeed Virgil who was the chief object of his study, and the Eclogues in particular, as he labored on the commentary that was to appear some thirty years later: as Clausen used to say, “it is a difficult thing to make a commentary.”  The hallmark of Clausen’s style as a critic was to read Latin poetry in the context of its literary antecedents, earlier Roman poets of course, but Greek poets of the Hellenistic period in particular.  In this respect his scholarship was pioneering.  Although he abhorred the term, his work was informed by the aesthetics of intertextuality avant la lettre, and this quality is on display most prominently in the publication of his Sather lectures in 1987.  Not content with the form this interpretation of the Aeneid had taken, Clausen continued to refine his reading in the years following his retirement and reissued the volume in 2002 with the new title Virgil’s Aeneid: Decorum, Allusion and Ideology. 

In the course of his career Clausen won many honors: he had been a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (1952-53), was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, and was awarded the Premio Internazionale Virgilio by the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Mantova in 1994.  At the time of his retirement he was Harvard’s Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature.  In public and in the classroom his demeanor was austere, restrained, and elegant, masking an almost painful reserve that was sometimes misconstrued as arrogance or indifference.  But any reference he made to himself was usually accompanied by a shy smile and a gesture of the right hand to his chest, as if out of embarrassment.  Students cherish recollections of Clausen reciting from memory passages from his favorite poets in Latin and English in a voice deep and resonant, yet tender, and not easily forgotten.  Many remember hours spent in his office, conversing on literature, politics, or the vagaries of life at his summer home in Newport, Vermont, in the region known as the Northeast Kingdom, which is how he would usually refer to it. Clausen was patient with students, but not indulgent, although the harshest criticism that he would mete out in person was to call an idea “ingenious.”

He formed strong personal attachments and never forgot what he owed to his former teachers and old friends; he was deeply affected by the premature death of Roger Mynors, his longtime friend and collaborator.  “It is this sort of personal relationship that helps to make our study traditional and humane,” he once wrote in a letter, “as it ought to be.”  He was most at ease and most himself in the company of his beloved Margaret, his second wife to whom he was married for the last thirty-six years of his life and who followed him in death only a few weeks after his passing.  With her, and especially when at their summer home in Vermont, the smiles came easily, and he exuded an almost boyish enthusiasm when he exchanged his trademark green jacket and tie for the plaid shirt that signalled the advent of another summer migration.  Books were as much a part of their private life as they were of his profession; both their homes, the cabin in Vermont and the house on Kenway Street in Cambridge, were littered with them, piled by the bedside or by the two chairs at the window.  “Literature has been my choice,” he remarked in his retirement speech, paraphrasing Coleridge. “And I am amazed at my good fortune, and thankful.”

Richard Tarrant, APA Newsletter (October 2006) 25-6; WhAm 61 (2007) 819.