Australian Dictionary of Biography

Keith Val Sinclair (1926–1999), professor of French, was born on 8 November 1926 in Auckland, New Zealand, only child of New Zealand-born parents Valentine Leslie Sinclair, traveller and later footwear retailer, and his wife Coral Dorothy, née Keith. The family moved to Wellington in Keith’s early childhood. After his parents were divorced in 1931, he was brought up by his mother. He attended Brooklyn Primary School (dux 1939) and Wellington College (1940–42), before matriculating in the faculty of arts at Victoria University College, University of New Zealand (later Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington) (BA, 1948; MA Hons, 1949; LitD, 1974). Periods of employment as a stock clerk and a labourer provided funds that allowed him to study full time from 1945. He was awarded a French government scholarship for the academic year 1949–50 at the Université de Paris. Because the bursary did not cover travel expenses, he signed on as an ordinary seaman aboard the merchant ship Highland Prince, manned, he said, by a ‘pistol-carrying master and a diverse crew of post-war desperadoes’ (Monks-Saint-Clair, pers. comm.).

A research scholarship from the Institut Britannique funded a second year’s study at the Université de Paris, which awarded Sinclair a licence ès lettres and a postgraduate diploma in phonetics; later, it would confer on him a doctorat de l'université (1958). In 1951 he began working as an English assistant at the Lycée Montaigne. Meanwhile, he read Old French texts at the École des Chartes and undertook advanced codicological and palaeographical studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Seeking further training in the exegesis of medieval literature, in 1952 he entered St Catherine’s College, Oxford (DPhil, 1960; DLitt, 1986), where Professor Alfred Ewert introduced him to works in Anglo-Norman. Sinclair’s Oxford thesis was a critical study of a 23,361-line manuscript romantic epic, Tristan de Nanteuil. An edition (1971) and a monograph (1983) dealing with this work’s themes and literary creation were to follow. Editions of the Hospitallers’ Riwle (1984) and of Robert le Chapelain’s Corset (1995) were further fruits of his Anglo-Norman studies.

Having tutored at St Catherine’s from 1952, Sinclair accepted in 1955 a lectureship in French at Canberra University College (School of General Studies, Australian National University, from 1960). He was a fellow and bursar of University House at the ANU (1956–62) and secretary of the Alliance Française, Canberra (1956–59). His discovery at the National Gallery of Victoria of an illuminated manuscript of Bersuire’s French translation of Livy’s Roman History inspired him to produce a study, The Melbourne Livy (1961), followed by the ground-breaking Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia (1969).

From 1963 Sinclair was a senior lecturer, then from 1978 an associate professor, at the University of Sydney, and was prominent in the affairs of professional bodies. He served as treasurer (1965–71) of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association. As secretary (1967–71), he co-founded the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Renaissance (Early Modern from 1996) Studies (life member 1996). He organised and wrote the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Medieval Manuscripts that took place in 1967 at the Fisher Library. Posters were designed by Peter Rolfe Monks, later known as Peter Rolfe Monks-Saint-Clair, whose devoted thirty-year friendship with Sinclair began at about this time. Sinclair’s erudite comprehension of the running of libraries saw him appointed (1967–72) to the Australian Unesco Committee for Libraries. His most important service was his work as secretary (1966–69) of the Australian Humanities Research Council and foundation secretary (1969–71) of its successor, the Australian Academy of the Humanities; he was also a councillor (1969–72) and treasurer (1971–72) of the AAH.

In 1972 Sinclair assumed the position of full professor of French in the department of romance and classical languages at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, teaching medieval French to undergraduates and postgraduates. While there, he became firm friends and exchanged house visits with Ruth J. Dean, the pre-eminent twentieth-century scholar of Anglo-Norman literature and texts. He located and examined manuscripts of prayers held in the United States of America, which he described in two supplements (1978 and 1987) to Jean Sonet’s Répertoire d’Incipit de Prières en Ancien Français. Sinclair’s French Devotional Texts of the Middle Ages: A Bibliographic Manuscript Guide was published in 1979, with supplements in 1982 and 1988. Monks recalled Sinclair’s ‘forays into European and American repositories and … the dynamic and unerring examination he made of their manuscripts’ (Monks and Owens 1994, xiv).

Sinclair was appointed in 1979 as professor of French and head of the department of modern languages at James Cook University (of North Queensland to 1997), Townsville. From 1981 to 1984 he also chaired the academic board. The festschrift his department published on his retirement in 1991 testified to the respect and affection in which he was held. He was acclaimed as an ‘inspirational teacher’ (Burns 1991, i) and a ‘civilised urbane scholar’ (Burns 1991, i), and admired as a hospitable and convivial companion. One colleague recalled an earlier ‘image of him sweeping majestically’ into a lecture theatre, ‘a rich mass of wavy black hair flourishing above his impressive brow’ (Burns 1991, iii). He listed his recreations as swimming, tennis, and opera.

In 1985 Sinclair had been appointed AO. Honorary doctorates from James Cook University (1993) and the University of Sydney (1994) recognised his outstanding contribution to tertiary scholarship, teaching, and administration. His award of the Cross of Merit (1983) and appointment as a knight commander of grace (1984) of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem honoured his research on Anglo-Norman religious texts. Further acknowledgment of his role in cross-cultural interchange came from the governments of France (Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques 1994), Belgium, Italy, and Luxembourg.

Emeritus Professor Sinclair’s retirement project, a deeply researched description and translation of Cyrille-Pierre-Théodore Laplace’s report of the corvette La Favorite’s passage from Sydney to New Zealand and stay in the Bay of Islands in September and October 1831 combined his knowledge of French language and culture with his New Zealand heritage. This book revisited the attraction to a life at sea evident in his boyhood cataloguing of Auckland shipping and youthful voyage to France. A translation of the report of the Australian leg of Laplace’s expedition was incomplete at his death.

As a young man, Sinclair had engaged in humanitarian work under the auspices of the Society of Friends, spending ‘summers in post-war Berlin caring for orphaned youngsters’ (Martin 1999, 84). ‘The orphans’ survival instinct and positive attitude in overcoming seemingly unsurmountable trauma remained a paradigm throughout his life’ (Monks-Saint-Clair, pers. comm.). In 1998 he moved to Canberra. After a painful and courageous, year-long, battle with cancer, he died there on 25 January 1999. A funeral service was conducted at the Anglican Church of St John the Baptist, Reid, and in August a memorial service was held in St Paul’s Cathedral Wellington. Tributes were notable for their diversity and warmth.

Sinclair’s publications numbered close to 150. More than any other scholar, he had raised awareness of the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts held in Australia by libraries and individuals. Throughout his career, he had adhered to principles of manuscript scholarship developed in Britain and Europe since the eighteenth century, principles which continued to evolve, partly because of his contribution. He was a social traditionalist whose opus demonstrates his wariness of the heavily theorised approaches that came to dominate textual studies and literary criticism in Western countries from the late 1960s. By contrast, his publications possess a substance and a value that will continue to benefit readers and scholars well into the future.