Alastair David Shaw Fowler CBE FBA (1930 – 9 October 2022) was a Scottish literary critic, editor, and an authority on Edmund Spenser, Renaissance literature, genre theory, and numerology.
[2] Known for his editorial work, Fowler's edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost, part of the Longman poets series, has some of the most scholarly and detailed notes on the poem and is widely cited by Milton scholars.
"[3] Fowler was critical of some later trends in literary scholarship, including "new historicism".
In 2005, he published an extremely critical review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World, which was widely discussed.
[4] Fowler was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to literature and education.