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Rebecca Bowen

University of Oxford, Medieval and Modern Languages, Post-Doc

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz / Max-Planck-Institut, Department Gerhard Wolf, Post-Doc

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Rebecca Bowen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and an assosciate fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford with the thesis, ‘Figures of Love: Amor from Antiquity to the Italian Middle Ages'. Her research focuses on the visual, literary, and material culture of the Italian peninsula in the late medieval and early modern periods, including questions of classical reception and intermediality.

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Victoria University

Nicola Esposito

University of Notre Dame

Maggie Fritz-Morkin

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Binghamton University

Francesco Ciabattoni

Georgetown University

Carmen Blanco Valdés

Universidad de Córdoba

Vanderbilt University

Timothy Kircher

Guilford College

Angela Porcarelli

Emory University

Teodolinda Barolini

Columbia University

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Publications by Rebecca Bowen

Review of The ‘Decameron’ Eighth Day in Perspective ed. by William Robins. Modern Language Review, vol. 119 no. 3, 2024, p. 415-417. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mlr.2024.a930829.

'Seeing the 'Divine Comedy' in Early Print', in 'Looking for Dante: Exploring the 'Divine Comedy in Print from the 15th Century to Today', ed. Wuon-Gean Ho, Rebecca Bowen & Simon Gilson (Treasures of the Tayloiran: Series Three: Cultural Memory, Volume 8, 2024).

Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’ was the subject of vivid illustrations from its earliest circulation and,... more Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’ was the subject of vivid illustrations from its earliest circulation and, when book making transitioned into the new medium of print in the late 1400s, it became the source of inspiration for new visual traditions. Seeking to see some of these early printed Dantes in more detail and to explore the meanings these books may still hold for us today, two University of Oxford specialists in Dante Studies and Book History, Rebecca Bowen and Simon Gilson, invited the artist and printmaker Wuon Gean-Ho to examine and respond to Renaissance editions of the Commedia held in the special collections of the University of Oxford’s Taylor Institution Library. The result is a body of work called ‘Looking for Dante’, a collection of artwork, film, and essays that explores universal themes in Dante’s text and considers their relevance today. Moving from morality and condemnation through love and redemption, ‘Looking for Dante’ offers a modern reading of the ‘Divine Comedy’ and the historical books that preserve it, reflecting on the universal appeal of ink on paper. Access the full, open-access publication here: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:43ea410b-2e64-4c81-8a97-5348d8c004d6/files/s3484zj61t

Modernizing Myths at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century: Dante, the Leandreride, and an Illustrated Ovid. Dante Studies. 141.1 (2023): 121–148.

The Leandreride, a late fourteenth-century mythological poem in the vernacular, was written on th... more The Leandreride, a late fourteenth-century mythological poem in the vernacular, was written on the cusp of the antiquarianizing developments that are generally associated with Italian Humanism. Mediating its mythological protagonist, Hero, through the words of Dante’s Francesca, the Leandreride creates a dense network of echoes and citations that bypasses allegorical approaches common in contemporary treatments of myths and implicates the antique tale in current discussions of ethics and desire. This modernizing gesture offers insight into the entanglements between contemporary and antique culture in early Humanist thought. Similar modernizations were common in visual culture and often maligned as simplistic forerunners to the antiquarian tastes of the fifteenth century. Analysis of marginal drawings in a coeval manuscript of Ovid’s Heroides (Ross. 893), a key source for the Leandreride, suggests that this modernizing approach can be better understood as a complex citational act, akin to the discursive complexity of the Leandreride’s Dantean intertexts.

Ero e Leandro: mitologia e temi lirici in una postilla al Purgatorio XXVIII (v. 73) nel ms. Urb. Lat. 366, 'Filologia Antica e Moderna', V.1 (2023): 47–78.

by Rebecca Bowen and Alessandro Zammataro

The manuscript Urb. Lat. 366, known as one of the most authoritative philological sources of the ... more The manuscript Urb. Lat. 366, known as one of the most authoritative philological sources of the Commedia, is furnished with a network of glosses that have, until now, been left undiscussed by scholarship. These glosses offer notable insight into the cultural formation of readers of Dante in the late Fourteenth Century and add detail to our understanding of the exegetical reception of the myths cited in his poem. Through a careful philological reconstruction of one of these glosses, a comment to Purgatorio 28 which relates to the myth of Hero and Leander, this article offers new points of departure for considering the possible interpretations of the myth in the postclassical period. From a philological- palaeographical study of the difficulties posed to reading the gloss, the article opens out to offer a critical interpretation of the reception of the myth of Hero and Leander from the Classical era to fourteenth-century Italy, aiming to reconstruct the cultural environment in which a glossator or reader may have encountered Dante’s poem and its mythological references. What emerges is a hybridisation of medieval and classical themes pointing to a veritable re-elaboration of the myth in relation to poetic tropes common in lyric poetry, particularly the trope of the loving gaze, which dominated vernacular lyric expression from as early as the Eleventh Century.

'Occhi Fissi': Fixing the Gaze in Dante's Commedia, 'Italian Studies', 78.1 (2023): 1-18

Italian Studies, 78:1, 1-18, 2023

Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in r... more Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in relation to contemporary discourses on sight, this article argues that, as well as a literary trope, Dante's depictions of fixing the gaze function as a metaliterary device, an invitation to the reader's critical eye that, when interrupted, draws attention to the multiple cultures of gazing circulating at the timefrom erotic obsession to contemplative ecstasy via visionary philosophical and theological inquiry. The roots of the trope are traced in Dante's rime and analysed in key episodes of the Commedia, including the dream of the Siren (Purgatorio XIX), Dante's 'too fixed' gaze (Purgatorio XXIII), and the climatic gazes pilgrim and guide turn to God in Paradiso. By encouraging the reader to fulfil the poet's vision in her imagination, the fixed gaze, and its frequent interruption, emerges as a uniquely suitable trope for negotiating the representational challenges of transcendental topics.

'Sandro Botticelli: Paradiso 21', in in Dante Depicted: A Commentary on Image, Text, and Exegesis around the ‘Commedia’, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, DOI: https://doi.org/10.17617/1.9xjf-dd86.

We are in Paradise. The sweep of the circle delineating the central composition tells us so with ... more We are in Paradise. The sweep of the circle delineating the central composition tells us so with an Aristotelian logic that, in his Convivio, Dante relates to perfection. 1 Total unity is broken by the toes of Dante's foot, which escape the bottom righthand corner, giving the pilgrim's posture an impression of movement. This sense of arrival is noted in Cristoforo Landino's prologue to the canto, which divides the diegetic action into four sections, noting ascent as the first: 'el suo ascenso alla spera di Saturno' [his ascent to the sphere of Saturn] (Landino, Par. XXI, Proemio). In Dante's text, however, the scene begins in medias res, a temporal compression activated through the emphatic placing of the deictic 'già' [already] as first word of the canto: 'già eran li occhi miei rifissi al volto' [already my eyes were fixed upon her face] (Par. XXI.1). In Botticelli's illustration this intensity is rendered in the reciprocal gaze that unites Dante and Beatrice in the foreground. Such direct and unambiguous eye-contact is strikingly rare across the Paradiso illustrations (it only appears in Paradiso IV, V, and XXVII), making it a noticeable feature of the composition.

Vita Nova 25, in 'Dante's "Vita Nova": A Collaborative Reading', edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb (Notre Dame University Press)

Vita Nova 13, in 'Dante's "Vita Nova" A Collaborative Reading', ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb (University of Notre Dame Press)

Languages of Desire in Botticelli and Dante: Paradiso 21, Working Papers in the Humanities vol. 16: 10–18.

This essay explores the multifaceted language of desire in Dante's Paradiso through a specific le... more This essay explores the multifaceted language of desire in Dante's Paradiso through a specific lens: Sandro Botticelli's visualization of the contemplative souls in canto 21 as a crowd of winged infants. Exploring the connotations of the visual language evoked by these figures and the figural histories with which they interact, this essay considers the ways in which Botticelli's artistic choice validates certain lexical strands in Dante's poem, particularly those which convey an affective and eroticized charge. Interweaving secular resonance and Christian symbolism, Botticelli's use of winged infants is ultimately seen to present a flexible visual language that reflects the semantic range of Dante's text, offering a metaphor for its enduringly complex, and often ambiguous, engagement with desire.

Review: Elisa Brilli and Giuliano Milani, 'Vite nuove. Biografia e autobiografia di Dante' Rome, Carocci, 2021 in Italian Studies, 78:1 (2023): 140–142

Italian Studies, 78:1, 140-142, 2023

Review: Rossana Fenu Barbera, 'Dante's Tears: The Poetics of Weeping from ‘Vita Nuova’ to the 'Commedia'', in Modern Language Review, 115.2 (2020), 476–77

Library Exhibitions by Rebecca Bowen

Dante and Somerville - an exhibition in Somerville College Library

From the founder of the college, Mary Somerville herself, to the current undergraduates, Somervil... more From the founder of the college, Mary Somerville herself, to the current undergraduates, Somerville College, Oxford has a long and strong tradition in readers of Dante. Through treasures from the collection in the Somerville library, including Mary Somerville and John Stuart Mill’s own copies of the Divine Comedy, a first edition of Gustave Doré’s illustrated Inferno, and several beautiful antiquarian prints of the sacro poema, this exhibition traced a history of Dante’s presence at the college and in the minds of its members past and present.

In the Margins Book Display

In tandem with the University of Oxford Medieval and Modern Languages Graduate Network and the Ta... more In tandem with the University of Oxford Medieval and Modern Languages Graduate Network and the Taylor Institution Library a cross-period, multilingual book display was created in the Voltaire Room at the Taylor Institution displaying books, pamphlets, and prints from the special collections connected to the theme of Marginality, from texts by marginal authors, to marginalia, and artists prints.

Network Events by Rebecca Bowen

PERLEGO Critical Perspectives on Image & Text (19-22 October 2020, University of Oxford) - Update: The conference will be held online. Please get in touch via our website if you are interested in participating (https://www.perlegonetwork.com)

by Sophie Koenig and Rebecca Bowen

Perlego: Methods of Research in Literature and the Visual Arts

An afternoon of four short talks followed by an extended roundtable discussion on the issues and ... more

Conferences by Rebecca Bowen

CfP Cultures of Air Workshop 17 November 2023. Deadline Oct 9

by Rose Byfleet and Rebecca Bowen

CfPs: Cultures of Air in the Premodern World, Early Career Workshop, Monash Centre for Medieval a... more CfPs: Cultures of Air in the Premodern World, Early Career Workshop, Monash Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS), Prato, Italy, Friday 17th November 2023

The new research series, Cultures of Air in the Premodern World invites expressions of interest for its inaugural workshop hosted by Monash University’s Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at Palazzo Vaj in Prato, Italy on Friday 17th November 2023. As the basis for the very conditions of life on earth, the air has been managed, harnessed, conceived of, and addressed across geographies and cultures, in relation to crises and as well as in times of sustainability, it has accrued spiritual and religious dimensions, stimulated specific technologies, been the focus of medical practices as well as philosophical speculation, and generated iconospheres that reach across visual, material, and literary production. With a focus on the premodern world, this research series seeks to investigate changes and adaptations in the knowledge and representation of the air from global and interdisciplinary perspectives. Expressions of interest are invited for 10-minute papers focused on topics including, but not limited to: scientific, medical, and philosophical conceptions of the air; technologies of the air; the air in theology; the air in literature; visual and material depictions of the air; animals of the air (real or imagined); air and architecture; and air and civic practice in the premodern period, broadly construed.
To apply for participation, please send a single pdf file including a short abstract outlining your area of contribution (max 250 words) and an academic bio (max 300 words) that explains your scholarly background and the relevance of your research interests to the series, by Monday 9th October. This workshop is the first of several encounters that will lead to the publication of an edited volume, to which participants may be invited to contribute. Up to six travel bursaries of €100 are available for HDR and ECR participants to attend the workshop in person.

To submit an application please email [email protected] or [email protected] by Monday 9th October.

Review of The ‘Decameron’ Eighth Day in Perspective ed. by William Robins. Modern Language Review, vol. 119 no. 3, 2024, p. 415-417. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mlr.2024.a930829.

'Seeing the 'Divine Comedy' in Early Print', in 'Looking for Dante: Exploring the 'Divine Comedy in Print from the 15th Century to Today', ed. Wuon-Gean Ho, Rebecca Bowen & Simon Gilson (Treasures of the Tayloiran: Series Three: Cultural Memory, Volume 8, 2024).

Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’ was the subject of vivid illustrations from its earliest circulation and,... more Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’ was the subject of vivid illustrations from its earliest circulation and, when book making transitioned into the new medium of print in the late 1400s, it became the source of inspiration for new visual traditions. Seeking to see some of these early printed Dantes in more detail and to explore the meanings these books may still hold for us today, two University of Oxford specialists in Dante Studies and Book History, Rebecca Bowen and Simon Gilson, invited the artist and printmaker Wuon Gean-Ho to examine and respond to Renaissance editions of the Commedia held in the special collections of the University of Oxford’s Taylor Institution Library. The result is a body of work called ‘Looking for Dante’, a collection of artwork, film, and essays that explores universal themes in Dante’s text and considers their relevance today. Moving from morality and condemnation through love and redemption, ‘Looking for Dante’ offers a modern reading of the ‘Divine Comedy’ and the historical books that preserve it, reflecting on the universal appeal of ink on paper. Access the full, open-access publication here: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:43ea410b-2e64-4c81-8a97-5348d8c004d6/files/s3484zj61t

Modernizing Myths at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century: Dante, the Leandreride, and an Illustrated Ovid. Dante Studies. 141.1 (2023): 121–148.

The Leandreride, a late fourteenth-century mythological poem in the vernacular, was written on th... more The Leandreride, a late fourteenth-century mythological poem in the vernacular, was written on the cusp of the antiquarianizing developments that are generally associated with Italian Humanism. Mediating its mythological protagonist, Hero, through the words of Dante’s Francesca, the Leandreride creates a dense network of echoes and citations that bypasses allegorical approaches common in contemporary treatments of myths and implicates the antique tale in current discussions of ethics and desire. This modernizing gesture offers insight into the entanglements between contemporary and antique culture in early Humanist thought. Similar modernizations were common in visual culture and often maligned as simplistic forerunners to the antiquarian tastes of the fifteenth century. Analysis of marginal drawings in a coeval manuscript of Ovid’s Heroides (Ross. 893), a key source for the Leandreride, suggests that this modernizing approach can be better understood as a complex citational act, akin to the discursive complexity of the Leandreride’s Dantean intertexts.

Ero e Leandro: mitologia e temi lirici in una postilla al Purgatorio XXVIII (v. 73) nel ms. Urb. Lat. 366, 'Filologia Antica e Moderna', V.1 (2023): 47–78.

by Rebecca Bowen and Alessandro Zammataro

The manuscript Urb. Lat. 366, known as one of the most authoritative philological sources of the ... more The manuscript Urb. Lat. 366, known as one of the most authoritative philological sources of the Commedia, is furnished with a network of glosses that have, until now, been left undiscussed by scholarship. These glosses offer notable insight into the cultural formation of readers of Dante in the late Fourteenth Century and add detail to our understanding of the exegetical reception of the myths cited in his poem. Through a careful philological reconstruction of one of these glosses, a comment to Purgatorio 28 which relates to the myth of Hero and Leander, this article offers new points of departure for considering the possible interpretations of the myth in the postclassical period. From a philological- palaeographical study of the difficulties posed to reading the gloss, the article opens out to offer a critical interpretation of the reception of the myth of Hero and Leander from the Classical era to fourteenth-century Italy, aiming to reconstruct the cultural environment in which a glossator or reader may have encountered Dante’s poem and its mythological references. What emerges is a hybridisation of medieval and classical themes pointing to a veritable re-elaboration of the myth in relation to poetic tropes common in lyric poetry, particularly the trope of the loving gaze, which dominated vernacular lyric expression from as early as the Eleventh Century.

'Occhi Fissi': Fixing the Gaze in Dante's Commedia, 'Italian Studies', 78.1 (2023): 1-18

Italian Studies, 78:1, 1-18, 2023

Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in r... more Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in relation to contemporary discourses on sight, this article argues that, as well as a literary trope, Dante's depictions of fixing the gaze function as a metaliterary device, an invitation to the reader's critical eye that, when interrupted, draws attention to the multiple cultures of gazing circulating at the timefrom erotic obsession to contemplative ecstasy via visionary philosophical and theological inquiry. The roots of the trope are traced in Dante's rime and analysed in key episodes of the Commedia, including the dream of the Siren (Purgatorio XIX), Dante's 'too fixed' gaze (Purgatorio XXIII), and the climatic gazes pilgrim and guide turn to God in Paradiso. By encouraging the reader to fulfil the poet's vision in her imagination, the fixed gaze, and its frequent interruption, emerges as a uniquely suitable trope for negotiating the representational challenges of transcendental topics.

'Sandro Botticelli: Paradiso 21', in in Dante Depicted: A Commentary on Image, Text, and Exegesis around the ‘Commedia’, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, DOI: https://doi.org/10.17617/1.9xjf-dd86.

We are in Paradise. The sweep of the circle delineating the central composition tells us so with ... more We are in Paradise. The sweep of the circle delineating the central composition tells us so with an Aristotelian logic that, in his Convivio, Dante relates to perfection. 1 Total unity is broken by the toes of Dante's foot, which escape the bottom righthand corner, giving the pilgrim's posture an impression of movement. This sense of arrival is noted in Cristoforo Landino's prologue to the canto, which divides the diegetic action into four sections, noting ascent as the first: 'el suo ascenso alla spera di Saturno' [his ascent to the sphere of Saturn] (Landino, Par. XXI, Proemio). In Dante's text, however, the scene begins in medias res, a temporal compression activated through the emphatic placing of the deictic 'già' [already] as first word of the canto: 'già eran li occhi miei rifissi al volto' [already my eyes were fixed upon her face] (Par. XXI.1). In Botticelli's illustration this intensity is rendered in the reciprocal gaze that unites Dante and Beatrice in the foreground. Such direct and unambiguous eye-contact is strikingly rare across the Paradiso illustrations (it only appears in Paradiso IV, V, and XXVII), making it a noticeable feature of the composition.

Vita Nova 25, in 'Dante's "Vita Nova": A Collaborative Reading', edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb (Notre Dame University Press)

Vita Nova 13, in 'Dante's "Vita Nova" A Collaborative Reading', ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb (University of Notre Dame Press)

Languages of Desire in Botticelli and Dante: Paradiso 21, Working Papers in the Humanities vol. 16: 10–18.

This essay explores the multifaceted language of desire in Dante's Paradiso through a specific le... more This essay explores the multifaceted language of desire in Dante's Paradiso through a specific lens: Sandro Botticelli's visualization of the contemplative souls in canto 21 as a crowd of winged infants. Exploring the connotations of the visual language evoked by these figures and the figural histories with which they interact, this essay considers the ways in which Botticelli's artistic choice validates certain lexical strands in Dante's poem, particularly those which convey an affective and eroticized charge. Interweaving secular resonance and Christian symbolism, Botticelli's use of winged infants is ultimately seen to present a flexible visual language that reflects the semantic range of Dante's text, offering a metaphor for its enduringly complex, and often ambiguous, engagement with desire.

Review: Elisa Brilli and Giuliano Milani, 'Vite nuove. Biografia e autobiografia di Dante' Rome, Carocci, 2021 in Italian Studies, 78:1 (2023): 140–142

Italian Studies, 78:1, 140-142, 2023

Review: Rossana Fenu Barbera, 'Dante's Tears: The Poetics of Weeping from ‘Vita Nuova’ to the 'Commedia'', in Modern Language Review, 115.2 (2020), 476–77

Dante and Somerville - an exhibition in Somerville College Library

From the founder of the college, Mary Somerville herself, to the current undergraduates, Somervil... more From the founder of the college, Mary Somerville herself, to the current undergraduates, Somerville College, Oxford has a long and strong tradition in readers of Dante. Through treasures from the collection in the Somerville library, including Mary Somerville and John Stuart Mill’s own copies of the Divine Comedy, a first edition of Gustave Doré’s illustrated Inferno, and several beautiful antiquarian prints of the sacro poema, this exhibition traced a history of Dante’s presence at the college and in the minds of its members past and present.

In the Margins Book Display

In tandem with the University of Oxford Medieval and Modern Languages Graduate Network and the Ta... more In tandem with the University of Oxford Medieval and Modern Languages Graduate Network and the Taylor Institution Library a cross-period, multilingual book display was created in the Voltaire Room at the Taylor Institution displaying books, pamphlets, and prints from the special collections connected to the theme of Marginality, from texts by marginal authors, to marginalia, and artists prints.

PERLEGO Critical Perspectives on Image & Text (19-22 October 2020, University of Oxford) - Update: The conference will be held online. Please get in touch via our website if you are interested in participating (https://www.perlegonetwork.com)

by Sophie Koenig and Rebecca Bowen

Perlego: Methods of Research in Literature and the Visual Arts

An afternoon of four short talks followed by an extended roundtable discussion on the issues and ... more

CfP Cultures of Air Workshop 17 November 2023. Deadline Oct 9

by Rose Byfleet and Rebecca Bowen

CfPs: Cultures of Air in the Premodern World, Early Career Workshop, Monash Centre for Medieval a... more CfPs: Cultures of Air in the Premodern World, Early Career Workshop, Monash Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS), Prato, Italy, Friday 17th November 2023

The new research series, Cultures of Air in the Premodern World invites expressions of interest for its inaugural workshop hosted by Monash University’s Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at Palazzo Vaj in Prato, Italy on Friday 17th November 2023. As the basis for the very conditions of life on earth, the air has been managed, harnessed, conceived of, and addressed across geographies and cultures, in relation to crises and as well as in times of sustainability, it has accrued spiritual and religious dimensions, stimulated specific technologies, been the focus of medical practices as well as philosophical speculation, and generated iconospheres that reach across visual, material, and literary production. With a focus on the premodern world, this research series seeks to investigate changes and adaptations in the knowledge and representation of the air from global and interdisciplinary perspectives. Expressions of interest are invited for 10-minute papers focused on topics including, but not limited to: scientific, medical, and philosophical conceptions of the air; technologies of the air; the air in theology; the air in literature; visual and material depictions of the air; animals of the air (real or imagined); air and architecture; and air and civic practice in the premodern period, broadly construed.
To apply for participation, please send a single pdf file including a short abstract outlining your area of contribution (max 250 words) and an academic bio (max 300 words) that explains your scholarly background and the relevance of your research interests to the series, by Monday 9th October. This workshop is the first of several encounters that will lead to the publication of an edited volume, to which participants may be invited to contribute. Up to six travel bursaries of €100 are available for HDR and ECR participants to attend the workshop in person.

To submit an application please email [email protected] or [email protected] by Monday 9th October.