Staff profile

Having completed my undergraduate and doctoral studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, and having spent ten years as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and (latterly) Reader in French at the University of Exeter, I moved to Durham in 2003 to take up the Chair in French vacated by the late Ann Moss. I am interested primarily in the application of elements of cognitive metaphor theory, as developed by George Lakoff and others, to the analysis of late medieval and early modern French texts, with particular reference to political and polemical discourse. Having published in the first instance on metaphors of the building in French allegorical texts, I have more recently turned my attention to metaphors of economic exchange in the polemical works that were motivated by the debate on linguistic borrowing from Italian into French in the later 16th century, focusing primarily on the vernacular writings of Henri Estienne. I also retain an interest in the reception of classical writers in Renaissance France, with particular reference to the works of Quintus Ennius, and in the language of Jean Lemaire de Belges and his exemplary role in the teaching of French in early modern England. I am currently preparing a new scholarly edition of the 15th-century chronicle of the Franco-Burgundian writer George Chastelain with my Durham colleague Graeme Small.

I am a member of the Durham Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (whose taught MA programme I directed between 2006 and 2008), and the Durham Centre for Classical Reception. I co-directed a series of interdisciplinary research dialogues on the theme of Metaphors as Models for the Durham Institute of Advanced Study in 2008, and have more recently run, in collaboration with colleagues at the Universities of Groningen and Copenhagen, a series of interdisciplinary colloquia on the topic ‘Authority and Persuasion: the Role of Commonplaces in Western Europe (c.1500-c.1800)’.

I served as Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures from 2004 to 2005, from 2008 to 2011, and from 2021 to 2024. I served as director of Durham's Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies between 2011 and 2013 and as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Arts and Humanities) between January 2014 and August 2019. In this latter role, I had executive responsibility for the University Library and Special Collections, and for the University's relationship with Ushaw College and The Auckland Project. In this latter capacity I initiated and led the development of the Durham Residential Research Library and the Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art. I also led the University's work on the Scottish Soldiers project and its divestment from companies involved in fossil fuel extraction.

I initiated and chaired the UCML Special Interest Group for Heads of Languages in UK HE between 2022 and 2024.

Research Supervision

I am happy to supervise research students working in the following areas:

Late medieval French poetry and historiography

Sixteenth-century French studies

French historical linguistics of the early modern period

Authored book

• Cowling, D. Mots françois bastards: Henri Estienne and the politics of language contact in sixteenth-century Europe. John Benjamins Publishing
• Minet-Mahy, V., & Cowling, D. (2009). L’Automne des images: pragmatique de la langue figurée chez George Chastelain, François Villon et Maurice Scève. Champion
• Cowling, D. (1998). Building the Text: Architecture as Metaphor in Late Medieval and Early Modern France. Clarendon Press

Chapter in book

• Cowling, D. (2024). A la cour du roi d'Angleterre: exemplarité et spécificité linguistiques. In A. Desbois-Ientile, & E. Delvallée (Eds.), Lemaire de Belges: une écriture sous le signe de la concorde (1473-1524) (257-266). Presses universitaires François-Rebelais
• Cowling, D. (2015). "Mendier les langues étrangères": histoire d’une métaphore née de crises économiques (et autres). In X. Bonnier (Ed.), Le parcours du comparant : pour une histoire littéraire des métaphores (469-480). Classiques Garnier. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-8124-3374-0.p.0469
• Cowling, D. (2014). ‘Perroquets en cage’: Henri Estienne and Anti-Aulic Satire. In G. Gasper, & J. McKinnell (Eds.), Ambition and anxiety : courts and courtly discourse, c.700-1600 (217-228). Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, [Durham, England]: Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University
• Cowling, D. (2011). Mutations du paysage allégorique à l'âge de la Grande Rhétorique: le cas de la Concorde des deux langages de Jean Lemaire de Belges (1511). In C. Imbert, & P. Maupeu (Eds.), Le Paysage allégorique: entre image mentale et pays transfiguré (177-191). Presses Universitaires de Rennes
• Cowling, D. (2011). Commonplaces and Everyday Wisdom in Henri Estienne. In D. Cowling, & M. B. Bruun (Eds.), Commonplace culture in Western Europe in the early modern period I : reformation, counter-reformation and revolt (113-127). Peeters Publishers
• Cowling, D. (2009). Neither a Borrower nor a Lender be: Linguistic Mercantilism in Renaissance France. In A. Musolff, & J. Zinken (Eds.), Metaphor and discourse (190-204). Palgrave Macmillan
• Cowling, D. (2007). Henri Estienne and the problem of French-Italian code-switching in sixteenth-century France. In W. Ayres-Bennett, & M. C. Jones (Eds.), The French language and questions of identity (162-170). Legenda
• Cowling, D. (2007). Henri Estienne pourfendeur de l’emprunt linguistique franco-italien. In G. Di Stefano, & R. M. Bidler (Eds.), Le langage figuré : actes du XIIe colloque international, Université McGill, Montréal, 4-5-6 octobre 2004 (165-173). Éditions CERES. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.lmfr.2.303159
• Cowling, D. (2006). Du langage courant aux fictions architecturales: la métaphore du bâtiment dans la littérature française des XVe et XVIe siècles. In M.-M. Castellani, & J. Prungnaud (Eds.), Architecture et discours (217-229). Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III
• Cowling, D. (2006). L'emploi de la métaphore dans les textes bourguignons du 15e siècle: bilan et perspectives de recherche. In C. Thiry, T. V. Hemelryck, & V. Minet-Mahy (Eds.), La littérature à la cour de Bourgogne : actualités et perspectives de recherche : actes du 1er colloque international du Groupe de recherche sur le moyen français, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la Neuve, 8-9-10 mai 2003 (55-66). Éditions CERES. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.lmfr.2.303077
• Cowling, D. (2004). Les métaphors de l'auteur et de la création littéraire à la fin du moyen age: le cas des Grands Rhétoriqueurs. In V. Minet-Mahy, C. Thiry, & T. Van Hemelryck (Eds.), Toutes choses sont faictes cleres par escripture : fonctions et figures d'auteurs du moyen age à l'époque contemporaine (99-111). Université catholique de Louvain, Faculté de philosophie et lettres
• Cowling, D. (2003). 'Colloquerons ceans le sien ymage': Le Temple de Bonne Renommée (1516) et le discours de la mémoire. In J. Britnell, & N. Dauvois (Eds.), Jean Bouchet : traverseur des voies périlleuses (1476-1557) : actes du colloque de Poitiers (30-31 août 2001) (63-73). Champion
• Cowling, D. (2000). Figures for Text and Author in Late Medieval France and Burgundy: Les Douze Dames de Rhétorique (1463). In G. H. Tucker (Ed.), Forms of the Medieval in the Renaissance: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of a Cultural Continuum (121-41). Rookwood Press

Edited book

• Cowling, D., & Bruun, M. B. (Eds.). Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt. Peeters Publishers
• Cowling, D. (Ed.). (2006). Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France: Essays in Honour of Keith Cameron. Rodopi
• Cowling, D. (Ed.). (2002). George Chastelain, Jean Robertet, Jean De Montferrant: Les Douze Dames De Rhetorique. Droz

Journal Article

• Cowling, D. (online). Le Jardin, la carrière, le chantier: les métaphores de la création littéraire chez les Rhétoriqueurs. Moyen français, 69-83
• Cowling, D. (2023). Language mixing and its discontents in 16th-century France: The case of Henri Estienne. Mélanges de l'École française de Rome - Modern and Contemporary Italy and Mediterranean, 135(1), 37-44. https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrm.12074
• Cowling, D. (2012). Constructions of Nationhood in the Latin Writings of Henri Estienne. Renæssanceforum, 8, 71-85
• Cowling, D. (2000). Verbal and Visual Metaphors in the Cambridge Manuscript of the Douze Dames de Rhétorique (1463). Journal of the Early Book Society for the study of manuscripts and printing history, 3, 94-118