Owen, Douglas David Roy 1922-2003

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OWEN, Douglas David Roy 1922-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born November 17, 1922, in Norton, Suffolk, England; died March 15, 2003. Educator and author. Owen was an authority on medieval French and Arthurian studies. After serving as a navigation officer in the Royal Air Force, he attended the University of Nottingham briefly before transferring to St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1955. By that time, he was already a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, where he would eventually become a professor of French in 1972, retiring in 1988. At St. Andrews he was also the founding editor of the Forum for Modern Language Studies, which had the unique distinction of being sued over copyright infringement by an Amsterdam pornography publication that used a similar title. Much more importantly than this strange controversy, however, was Owen's work as a translator and editor of medieval French literature, and as an author of books such as The Evolution of the Grail Legend (1968), The Legend of Roland: A Pageant of the Middle Ages, (1973), and Noble Lovers (1975). He was, furthermore, praised for his translation The Song of Roland: The Oxford Text (1972) and The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes (1985). Owen's last publications included Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend (1993), William the Lion: Kingship and Culture, 1143-1214 (1997), and his translation The Romance of Reynard the Fox (1994).