McGowan, Margaret, 1931-2022

Margaret McGowan made significant contributions in three important areas of renaissance studies: in the history of dance, where she was a true pioneer, discovering a new subject and collecting the primary resources to make them available to later scholars; in the study of renaissance festivals, where she followed the lead of Jean Jacquot, publishing editions of several renaissance festivals and writing important studies of different aspects of the genre; and French renaissance literature, where she wrote about La Fontaine, Montaigne, Ronsard and the idea of Rome in French renaissance literature and culture. She was a formidable academic administrator at the University of Sussex and the British Academy, and she was associated with the Warburg Institute for almost seventy years.

Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 21