Don Paul Fowler
Encyclopedia
Life
Fowler was from a BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
working-class background and went to King Edward VI Camp Hill School
King Edward VI Camp Hill School
King Edward VI Camp Hill School may refer to:*King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, a boys' grammar school in Birmingham, England*King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls, a girls' grammar school in Birmingham, England...
for boys there. After completing his studies at Christ Church, Oxford, Fowler was first appointed Lecturer in Classics at Magdalen College
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
(1976–77), subsequently Dyson Junior Research Fellow in Greek Culture at Balliol College (1978–80), then, at the early age of 28 years, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College
Jesus College, Oxford
Jesus College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street...
, holding simultaneously a University Lecturership in Greek and Latin Literature at Oxford University (1981–99). Endowed with an outgoing temperament, Fowler was connected to numerous classicists in North America and Europe. His command of Italian enabled him to give even extemporized talks in that language. Thus, he became an important middleman between Italian Latinists and British classicists in the eighties. He kept close ties in particular with Gian Biagio Conte
Gian Biagio Conte
Gian Biagio Conte is an Italian classicist and professor of Latin Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.-Life:...
and Alessandro Barchiesi and the Italian peridiocal Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici
Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici
Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici is an Italian periodical within the realm of classical philology founded in 1978....
. Fowler also was on the editorial boards of further periodicals (amongst others Journal of Roman Studies and Arachnion).
Fowler married classicist Peta Fowler (née Moon) in 1977 and they had a daughter, Sophia. He died in Oxford on 15 October 1999.
Work
Although he did not leave a monograph at the time of his premature death, Fowler is to be reckoned amongst the outstanding Latinists of his generation on account of his intellectual range and originality. He was one of the pioneers in the application of modern literary theoryLiterary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
and information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
within classical studies. His special research area in Latin literature was Roman Epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
and the works of Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, subjects to which he made numerous contributions, as he did to others. A book on Lucretius did not appear, however, nor did the long-awaited book with the provisional title Unrolling the Text: books and readers in classical Latin poetry, which was to cover the history of the book roll in antiquity and its function in ancient poetry. Nevertheless, a commentary on part of Book II of Lucretius has been published posthumously by his wife Peta. Moreover, Fowler wrote Subject Reviews in Latin Literature for the periodical Greece and Rome from 1986 to 1993 and was, together with his wife Peta, area editor for Latin literature in the third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary
Oxford Classical Dictionary
-Overview:The Oxford Classical Dictionary is considered to be the standard one-volume encyclopaedia in English of topics relating to the Ancient World and its civilizations. It was first published in 1949, edited by Max Cary with the assistance of H. J. Rose, H. P. Harvey, and A. Souter. A...
(see in particular his contributions on Lucretius, Virgil and Literary Theory and the Classics). As for literary theory, he worked in particular on irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
, closure
Poetic closure
Poetic closure is the sense of conclusion given at the end of a poem. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's detailed study—Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End—explores various techniques for achieving closure. One of the most common techniques is setting up a regular pattern and then breaking it to mark...
and intertextuality
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
.
Selected publications
Commentary- Lucretius on atomic motion. A commentary on De rerum natura book two, lines 1 - 332, ed. by Peta Fowler, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. ISBN 0-19-924358-1
Edited books
- (with Efrossini Spentzou): Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. ISBN 0199240043
- (with D.H. Roberts and F.M. Dunn): Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature. Princeton 1997. ISBN 0-691-04452-X. Rev. Marilyn B. Skinner, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 97.12.13
Collection of articles
- Roman constructions. Readings in postmodern Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000. ISBN 0-19-815309-0
Articles
- The Didactic Plot, in: Matrices of genre. Authors, canons, and society, ed. Dirk ObbinkDirk ObbinkDirk D. Obbink is an American-born papyrologist and Classicist. He is the Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature in the Faculty of Classics at Oxford University and is the head of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project...
and Mary Depew, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2000 (Center for Hellenic Studies colloquia, 4). ISBN 0-674-00338-1 - Epic in the Middle of the Wood: Mise en Abyme in the Nisus and Euryalus Episode, in: Intratextuality. Greek and Roman Textual Relations. Edited by Alison Sharrock and Helen Morales. Oxford 2000, 89-113.
- From Epos to Cosmos: Lucretius, Ovid, and the Poetics of Segmentation, in: Ethics and Rhetoric. Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday. Ed. by Doreen Innes, Harry Hine and Christopher Pelling. Oxford 1995, 3-18.
- Deviant focalisation in Vergil’s Aeneid, in: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 36 (1990) 42-63.
- Lucretius and Politics, in: Philosophia Togata. Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society. Ed. M. Griffin and J. Barnes. Oxford 1989, 120-50.
Miscellaneous
- Titus Lucretius Carus, On the nature of the universe, tr. Sir Ronald Melville, introduction by Don and Peta Fowler. New York: Oxford University Press 1999.
- Gian Biagio Conte: Latin Literature: A History, tr. Joseph B. Solodow, rev. Don Fowler and Glenn W. MostGlenn W. MostGlenn Warren Most is a classicist and comparatist originating from the US, but also working in Germany and Italy.Most studied classics at Harvard from 1968 on and received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Classics in 1972...
. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 (review by Peter Davis, in: Scholia Reviews ns 5 (1996) 3)
Further reading
- S. J. Heyworth, P. G. Fowler, S. J. Harrison: Classical constructions: papers in memory of Don Fowler, classicist and epicurean (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press 2007)
- Obituary, in: Gnomon 73, 2001
External links
- Denis FeeneyDenis FeeneyDenis C. Feeney is Professor of Classics and Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University. He was born in New Zealand and educated at St Peter's College, Auckland and Auckland Grammar School. He received his B.A. , MA in Latin and MA in Greek from the University of Auckland and a D.Phil....
: Obituary: Don Fowler, in: The Independent, Monday 1 November 1999 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-don-fowler-1120188.html - Alison Sharrock: Don Fowler, in: The Guardian, Saturday 27 November 1999 http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/1999/nov/27/guardianobituaries2
- Marilyn Deegan: Obituary Don Paul Fowler 1953-1999, in: Computers & Texts No.18/19, Spring 2000, p. 39 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/publish/comtxt/ct18-19/39obituary.pdf (PDF)