Gwenyth Elise Hood

Gwenyth was born in White Plains, New York, and moved with her family to Brandon, Vermont in 1963.

As a child, she loved animals: especially horses, dogs, ducks and cats. She enjoyed riding horses. There was one special pony in the neighborhood that she was often able to ride. She loved her English Springer Spaniels, and raised a litter of puppies they produced. She also enjoyed swimming, hiking, many other family activities. Throughout her life she had a lively imagination. As a small child, she loved the books The Fairy Doll, The Blue Bird, Little Princess and fairy tales. She was very verbal and could recite her favorite books from memory. She loved to listen to her grandfather, James Snee, as he told leprechaun stories. She loved reading from an early age. She read through the set of encyclopedias in her home, and developed favorite authors—Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, and J.R.R.Tolkien. As an adolescent, she studied Dante, was tutored in Latin and studied Italian. She learned French in high school and as part of family heritage. She greatly admired C.S. Lewis and his books, including the Chronicles of Narnia.

Her faith was very important to Gwenyth and she was baptized as an infant at St. Bartholomew’s Church in White Plains, New York, with godparents, Patricia and Russell Dutcher and Cha-ling Chang. Later, she was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at age 12. She took great comfort in her grandparents, Harvey and Beatrice Hood, who were ministers in the Presbyterian Church. She had a personal relationship with Jesus that lasted her whole life and gave her great comfort and hope, even to the last moment. She was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Huntington, West Virginia, where she loved to sing in the choir. She liked to sing and play the guitar and she learned to appreciate classical music from her father. She also loved to hear her father sing and read stories, with his beautiful voice.

She graduated from Wellesley College in 1977, where she majored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Latin, graduating with honors, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She won a literary prize in her senior year at Wellesley College. In 1979, she earned her M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. That same year her novel, Fior del Verde, was awarded the highest prize in the university’s Hopwood Contest for an unpublished historical novel. It was set in Medieval Italy with the title from Canto 3 of Dante’s Purgatorio. She earned her PhD in 1984 in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation on “The Lidless Eye and the Long Burden: the Struggle between Good and Evil in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings”. In 1982, her novel, The Coming of the Demons (1st set of a trilogy) was published by William Morrow.

Gwenyth was a member of the governing board (Counsel of Stewards) of the Mythopoeic Society from 1997-2019 and edited their annual literary magazine, The Mythic Circle.

Gwenyth was a professor at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia from 1989 until 2022 and was recently named Professor Emeritus for her long work. Gwenyth dedicated her 33-year career to sharing a quiet passion with students for the subjects of English Composition, Creative Writing, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Medieval Literature, as well as interdisciplinary Honors courses in “Literature of Plagues and Epidemics” and “Doctors and Patients in Literature”.

Gwenyth was editor and translator (includes Latin text; introduction and commentary). Book in Honor of Augustus (Liber ad honorem Augusti), 2012.

Gwenyth published another book, Dante’s Dream A Jungian Psychoanalytical Approach in 2021, De Gruyter and MIP (Medieval Institute Press)

Gwenyth authored the following academic articles (listed by Marshall University web site, under Gwenyth Hood’s writings:

““Sauron as Gorgon and Basilisk.” Seven: An Anglo American Literary Review 8 (August 1987) pp. 59-71.

“Sauron and Dracula.” Mythlore 52 (Winter 1988) pp. 11-17. Rpt. in Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics. Ed. Margaret L. Carter, University of Michigan Press, 1988. pp. 215-230.

“Husbands and Gods as Shadowbrutes: Beauty and the Beast from Apuleius to C. S. Lewis.” Mythlore 56 (1988) pp. 33-60.

“Foreground and Background: Three Literary Treatments of the Bubonic Plague.” Bulletin of West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 12 (1990) pp. 45-52.

“Medieval Love-Madness and Divine Love,” Mythlore 61 (1990) pp. 20-28.

“And the Plague Rages On: Fear of the Plague Victim in Manzoni, Defoe and Shilts.” Journal of Social and Biological Structures. (Winter, 1991). pp. 473-486.

“Nature and Technology: Angelic and Sacrificial Strategies in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 74 (1993). pp. 6-12.

“The Earthly Paradise in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 80 (1995) pp. 139-150. Also published in Spanish translation, as “El paraiso terrenal en El SeÁor de los Anillos de Tolkien.” In Tolkien, o la fuerza del mito. Eds. Eduardo Segura and Guillermo Peris. Madrid: José San Germán, 2003.

“Falcandus and Fulcaudus, Epistola ad Petrum, Liber de Regno Sicilie: Literary Form and Author’s Identity.” Studi Medievali, June 1999 3rd Series, XL pp. 1-41.

“Heroic Orual and the Tasks of Psyche.” Mythlore 104/105, (Spring/Summer 2009). pp. 43-81.

Short Stories and Excerpts

“The Fountain and the Black Fish.” Mythic Circle 4 (Winter 1987) pp. 40-46.

“The Swan Chariot.” Mythic Circle 7 (Fall/Winter 1988) pp. 17-21.

“Sweet as Muscatel.” Mythic Circle 9 (January 1990) pp. 38-41.

“The Latest Model.” Mythic Circle 15 (Early Summer 1993) pp. 12-17

Gwenyth is survived by brother Philip and his wife, Christine Hood, of Somerville, MA and sister Karen Tillberg of Sharon, MA, nephews and nieces: Byron Hood and his wife, Emi Nietfeld, of New York, New York and Adam Hood and his wife, Sara Luo, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Heather Tillberg-Webb and her husband, Craig Webb, of Bedford, New Hampshire, Douglas Tillberg of Waltham, Massachusetts and Daniel Tillberg and his wife, Lauren Hinkle, of Longmont, Colorado and great nieces: Evelyn and Beatrix Webb of Bedford, New Hampshire, Bryn, Kate and Marin Tillberg and Ramona and Margo Hinkberg of Longmont, Colorado.

Services for Gwenyth from the Gillooly Funeral Home, 126 Walpole Street (Rt. 1A) NORWOOD on 11 AM May 30th 2023.

In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made in Gwenyth’s memory to the Children International ( https://www.children.org/) in the name of Gwenyth Hood, account # 375824, so this will go to the support of the two children, Angel (from Guatemala) and Rodelio (from the Philippines) that she has been sponsoring.