Dr. Leake is a current resident of New England, which he describes as “the most perfect region in the whole world (excepting only “Old” England).” He became aware of TPS through his wife, who was a TPS student in high school and taught Latin at TPS for six years. He has three children, two boys and one girl, between the ages of three and six, whom he is very proud of (although he really wants them to learn to put the caps back on the markers when they’re finished drawing).
Grace: What courses do you teach?
Dr. Leake: I teach Introduction to Giant Transforming Robot Fiction; Great Beards in History and Literature; and an entire course on the “Council of Elrond” chapter in The Lord of the Rings. Okay, no, I made that up. But I do teach English Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots; Arthurian Literature; Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Literature; College Composition; the “Great Books” in Belhaven High Scholars Years 1 and 2; and, in the summer, Writing for Upper High School and College – all subjects which I find fascinating, for different reasons.
Grace: Which period of history is your favorite?
Dr. Leake: You mean I have to choose just one? How cruel is that! I guess it must be northwestern Europe in the early medieval period – supposedly the “dark ages,” and certainly tumultuous and troubled, but also a time of ardent literary conservation and innovation, as well as of heroic (and often tragic) valor. Much of all of this – the heroism and the literary activity – is now lost to time, or only partially recorded. “Dark” ages indeed, dark to us.
Grace: What are your favorite books?
Dr. Leake: Thank goodness you said “books” instead of “book!” Fiction: Beowulf (in Old English); the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Saga of Njal; Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur; Wordsworth’s Prelude; the English and Scottish Popular Ballads (all five volumes); and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I also have a thing for just browsing in reference books (Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology); and I derive both enjoyment and edification from C.S. Lewis’ essays and his book English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.
Grace: What animal do you find the most fascinating?
Dr. Leake: There are no animals cooler than dinosaurs.
Grace: What is your favorite Bible verse?
Dr. Leake: Again with this cruelty – confining me to just one! Probably the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 9:2-7 strikes the deepest and oldest roots for me, especially verse two: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: / they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (KJV). But then again, it’s hard to top anything, anything, said by Jesus.
Grace: Who is your favorite author?
Dr. Leake: I’m going to just pretend you said “authors.” Tolkien, Lewis, Austen, Wodehouse, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats; and the anonymous 14th-century author of northwestern England who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Pearl.
Grace: Which word is your favorite?
Dr. Leake: Okay, now this is just torture! There’s just so many options here – like Welsh hiraeth, a beautiful word meaning “longing” or “nostalgia”; or the Swedish word for turtle, sköldpadda, literally meaning “shield-toad”; but if I’m forced to pick one favorite, I’m going to go with: egg. The English word “egg.” Why does English say “egg”? The related German form is “Ei,” which is pretty much what the word was in Old and Middle English as well. So why the double-g? An entire history lurks behind “egg” – prehistoric phonetic shifts, the breakup of the ancient Germanic dialects in unrecorded history, the contact in the Middle Ages between Old English and Old Norse (my two favorite languages), and the emergence of Modern English. All there in “egg.” Both delightful and fascinating.
Grace: Why are learning Latin and Greek roots so vital to studying English?
Dr. Leake: Learning Latin and Greek roots is fundamental to studying English, both for native and non-native speakers, for several reasons: for one thing, it provides you with the building blocks for recognizing massive amount of vocabulary; it also provides you with the analytical tools for interpreting vocabulary in context. Between these two things, if you encounter a word you’ve never seen before, but you a) understand the meaning of the prefix, suffix, and/or base-word, and b) have an appreciation for the ways in which words change over time and how they function metaphorically (a great deal of English is metaphor), there’s a good chance you’ll understand what that word means. It’s also extremely useful for composition: it imparts careful, precise, and nuanced appreciation of language and how language is used.
Grace: Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Leake!