Barbara C. Bowen

Barbara C. Bowen (4 May 1937 – 19 November 2019) was a British professor of French and a prominent Renaissance scholar active in the United States. She was a professor emerita at Vanderbilt University, where she was the first woman to lead a department in the College of Arts.

Life and education Bowen was born in Great Britain on 4 May 1937. She developed an interest in French language and literature from the age of 10. She received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from Oxford University, and later a Doctorate at the University of Paris in 1962.

Bowen's research interests included François Rabelais and 16th-century French literature, French comic theatre, European Renaissance humor, and Renaissance art history. She was the author of five major books, including Enter Rabelais, Laughing (1998) and Humor and Humanism (2004), an anthology of her articles.

Selected publications Les caractéristiques essentielles de la farce française, et leur survivance dans les années 1550–1620. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1964. The Age of Bluff: Paradox and Ambiguity in Rabelais and Montaigne. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1972.