George S. Tate received his BA in English from Brigham Young University,  his graduate degree in comparative literature, and his PhD from Cornell University in medieval studies (English, Scandinavian, and German). Recipient of many academic honors, he numbers among them a Fulbright fellowship to Iceland in 1971–72 and a Marshall fellowship to Denmark in 1973. Now associate professor of comparative literature and graduate coordinator of the Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University, he has published articles on Old English and Old Norse literature and has done other studies in Mormon literature, including an examination of Nobel Prize–winning writer Halldór Laxness, who used the Mormons’ proselyting and emigration efforts as the basis for an ambitious novel, Paradise Reclaimed.