Margaret M. McGowan

Research McGowan's first book, published in 1963, was her doctoral dissertation. It was especially well-received in France, with reviewers citing her pioneering evaluation of the political context of dance, with ballet in particular demonstrated as a politically driven artform.

In 2008, McGowan's Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession was published and garnered the 2009 Wolfson History Prize. This extended her thesis with the latest discoveries in French dance history, juxtaposing the courtly Valois performance art with contemporaneous popular genres. Her deep understanding of the archival material was appreciated, as was the presentation of textual material along with scenic and costume drawings. Especially useful was her detailed analysis of the finances, schedules and rehearsals of ballet production. She was criticised for not engaging, however, with competing researches. For instance, her assessment of Catherine de' Medici as only a dance enthusiast had been subsequently overturned by other scholars who now view her as a prime mover of ballet. Other reviewers pointed out inaccuracies in her rendition of historic names, misunderstandings of source texts, particularly from the Italian, and inaccurate generalisations on the evolution of dance styles.

McGowan's 2012 book, La Danse à la Renaissance, analysed sixteenth and seventeenth century dance in France via contemporary art and documents and synthesised the works of French and other specialists of social and political thought, combined with her own primary researches. The book was appreciated for its detailed connections between intellectual happenings and the creations of choreographers and performers as portrayed at the time.

After retirement, McGowan continued her researches. Her last book Festival and Violence was published in 2019, on European Renaissance festivals and their mixing of war and art. Before her death she finished Harmony in the Universe, discussing the search for peace via these fêtes.

McGowan died at a hospital in Brighton, on 16 March 2022, aged 90. She suffered from bladder cancer prior to her death.

Publications L'art du Ballet de Cour en France, 1581–1643. Paris, 1963. Montaigne's Deceits. London, 1974, L'entrée de Henri II à Rouen, 1550. Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1974, Balet Comique de la Reyne, 1581. Medieval and Renaissance Texts, Binghamton, 1982, Form and Meaning: Aesthetic Coherence in Seventeenth-century French Drama, ed. with Ian D. McFarlane. Avebury, 1982, Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard. California University Press, 1985. The Vision of Rome in the French Renaissance. Yale University Press, 2000. Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession. Yale University Press, 2008. La Danse à la Renaissance. Sources livresques et albums d'images. National Library of France, 2012, Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615: A Celebration of the Habsburg and Bourbon Unions. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013, Festival and Violence: Princely Entries in the Context of War, 1480–1635, 2019, Brepols.