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The 36,900 Google entries, the multi-page bibliography, the books, and the articles fail to capture what was extraordinary about Michael Riffaterre. Simply put, he was not only University Professor but a grand professeur. You will note I am using a French phrase instead of the English terms, great teacher or great professor. Why?
Mike, as it amused him to be called - when we were fellow students back in the Fifties, he was still Michel, and I always called him Michel - Mike was at his most brilliant in French. His mastery of the language, of its rhythm, inflexions, harmony, and the timber of his deep and rich voice were an element of the grand professeur potion. Somewhere in the Columbia archives are recordings of poetry he made for Jeanne Varney Pleasants (she, of phonetics fame) that were meant to exemplify an ideal model of the best in the language. Rather than an archilecteur - remember that Mike defined this as the average reader, and there was nothing average about Mike's interpretation of a text - he was an archilocuteur, one whose speech incorporated the rhetoric of virtual discourses. While his lectures in English were outstanding, the ones in French had magic.
There are other ingrethents in the grand professeur brew: for example, presence. Michel entered into a lecture hall or a classroom, and there was a quality about his stance, his way of moving or standing, that held everyone's attention. I remember an instance at one of the...