'I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.' Which was study monsters. It was then that an English teacher helped change his plans of becoming a sailor ('Even though I can't swim,' he chuckles) after reading a poem about a monster called Beowulf. Williams, who teaches a course on mediaeval monsters called 'The Grotesque,' says he has been interested in monsters since he was a high school sophomore. 'Each time I would start writing again, I was always hoping I would find enough time to get beyond where I had stopped.'īut finish it he did. 'The book would not have taken 20 years to finish had I worked on it full time,' he says, adding every writing break would require that he reread much of his manuscript. Time-consuming research also slowed down the process. Williams, who has written five other books, including one called Chaucer and Language to be published in 1999, says it took nearly two decades to complete Deformed Discourse because he was often sidetracked by other projects and commitments, like chairing McGill's Department of English from 1979 to 1989. 'Being nominated was a big surprise for me,' says Williams, comfortably seated in his Arts Building office, the crisp fall breeze from an open window flowing through his halo of white hair and a smile curling his lips. Winners will be revealed during the Federation's general assembly late this month. Williams, who has taught English at McGill since 1967, recently found out the 408-page tome has been short-listed for a Raymond Klibansky Scholarly Book Prize, awarded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada. SYLVAIN-JACQUES DESJARDINS | Professor David Williams may soon be rewarded for labouring nearly 20 years on his last book, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996).

When the english fall by david williams