Beryl Rowland: In Memoriam

Abstract

Beryl Rowland died in Victoria, British Columbia, on April 24, 2003. When Beryl Rowland received her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1962, she embraced the world of scholarship with the same enthusiasm and determination that had marked her first forty years. A survivor of the London Blitz, ?migr? to the snowy plains of Athabasca, Canada, novelist, art and drama critic, and one-time business manager of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, she was well prepared for the tribu lations and triumphs of academe. Mostly, she experienced the latter, authoring more than 150 scholarly articles and several books, predomi nantly on medieval subjects: for example, the guides to animal symbol ism, Blind Beasts (1971) Animals with Human Faces (1973), and Birds with Human Souls (1978), as well as A Medieval Women's Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (1981). She was also editor of the award winning Cressida in Alberta (1955), the oft-reprinted Companion to Chaucer Studies, Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour ofRossell Hope Robbins (1974), and Essays on Chaucerian Irony (1985). During her long associa tion with York University in Toronto, this wry feminist was respected as a hard-working, focused teacher and mentor, and, concomitant with her earning a second doctorate from the University of London, she was named Distinguished Research Professor in 1983. Beyond York's campus Beryl was likewise recognized. She delivered numerous scholarly papers in Europe, Asia, and North America, had membership in several professional organizations and on prestigious edi torial boards (including The Chaucer Review), and was president of the New Chaucer Society from 1984 to 1986. Retirement to Victoria with her husband Dr. E. Murray Rowland in 1987 did not end her intellectual pur suits. She continued to write and to think?as was her wont?outside the