Robert D. Fulk

Robert D. Fulk

Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus, English

Education

  • Ph.D., English, University of Iowa, 1982
  • M.F.A., Fiction, University of Iowa, 1976
  • M.A., English, University of Chicago, 1974
  • B.A., English, Oakland University, 1973

About Robert D. Fulk

R.D. Fulk is a medievalist and a linguist, specializing in Germanic (especially Old English and Old Icelandic) and Celtic languages and literatures, the history of the English language, and comparative Indo-European linguistics. Some particular areas of research are Old and Middle English dialectology, textual criticism, phonological and morphological change, and early Germanic metrics. With Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles he has edited Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, fourth edition (Toronto, 2008; click here for supplementary materials), and with Christopher M. Cain he wrote A History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 2002; revised edition 2013). His completion of the late Richard M. Hogg’s Grammar of Old English: Volume 2: Morphology was published by Wiley-Blackwell in January of 2011. His Introduction to Middle English: Grammar, Texts was published by Broadview Press in early 2012, and with Stefan Jurasinski, he completed an edition of the Old English Canons of Theodore, published by the Early English Text Society in 2012. In the latest volume (2013) of Skaldic Poetry in the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross, Edith Marold, Guðrún Nordal, Diana Whaley, Tarrin Wills, and Kari Ellen Gade, 9 vols. (Turnhout, 2007-) appear his editions of works by Þormóðr Bersason Kolbrúnarskáld, Haraldr hárfagri, Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Þorbjörn hornklofi, Gunnhildr konungamóðir, Hákon góði, Eyvindr Finnsson skaldaspillir, Þorkell klyppr Þórðarson, Sighvatr Þorðarson, as well as some anonymous compositions. Click here for the Skaldic Project Web site.

Journal Articles and Other Publications

Other Articles:

Edition and translation of poetry from Njáls saga Fóstbrœðra saga (among others), to appear in Skaldic Poetry in the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross, Edith Marold, Guðrún Nordal, Diana Whaley, Tarrin Wills, and Kari Ellen Gade.

Philological commentary on the articles, to appear in a special issue of English Language and Linguistics on cognitive approaches to English language history, ed. Alexander Bergs and Thomas Hoffmann.

“Language Change: Discovery and Explanation.” To appear in Teaching the History of the English Language, ed. Colette Moore and Chris Palmer. To be published by the MLA.

“The Refashioning of Christ’s Passion in an Anonymous Old English Homily for Palm Sunday (HomS 18).” To appear in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.

“Particle Verses in Old English and Eddic Poetry.” To appear in a Festschrift for Geoffrey R. Russom, ed. M. J. Toswell and Lindy Brady. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.

“An Edition of Two Old English Homilies: ‘The Capital Sins’ (HomM 2) and ‘Lenten Tide’ (HomM 10).” To appear in Old English Tradition: Essays in Honor of J. R. Hall, ed. Lindy Brady. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

“Eddic Metres.” To appear in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry, ed. Judy Quinn and Carolyne Larrington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Old English.” (5,000-word entry for the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Medieval British Literature, ed. Siân Echard and Robert Rouse.) To appear.

“A Philological Tour of HEL,” to appear in the proceedings of the eighth Studies in the History of the English Language conference, ed. Don Chapman and Colette Moore. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

“Pragmatic and Stylistic Functions of Binomials in Old English,” to appear in Fixed and Flexible: Binomials in the History of English, ed. Joanna Kopaczyk and Hans Sauer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Philological Methods.” In The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics, ed. Merja Kytö and Päivi Pahta, 95–110. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016.

Colin J. Grant, “Interview with Robert D. Fulk.” Journal of English Linguistics 42 (2014), 259-79.

“Beowulf and Language History.” In The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf, 19-36. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014.

R.D. Fulk, ed. and trans. “Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Poem about Haraldr hárfagri” (pp. 60–4); “Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Lausavísur” (pp. 64–6); “Haraldr hárfagri, Lausavísa” (pp. 71–2); “Þorbjorn hornklofi, Haraldskvæði” (pp. 91–117); “Gunnhildr konungamóðir, Lausavísa” (pp. 150–2); “Hákon inn góði Haraldsson, Lausavísa” (pp. 153–4); Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finsson, Hákonarmál” (pp. 171–95); “Þorkell klyppr Þórðarson, Lausavísa” (pp. 269–70); “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur” (pp. 578–614); “Sigvatr Þórðarson, Lausavísur” (pp. 698–737); Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld, Lausavísur” (pp. 820–44); “Anonymous, Oddmjór” (pp. 1001–2); “Anonymous, Eiríksmál” (pp. 1003–13); in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, Volume 1: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1, ed. Diana Whaley. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. [171 pages total.]

Matthew Townend and R.D. Fulk, edd. and transs. “Óttarr svarti, Lausavísur” (pp. 783–9), in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, Volume 1: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1, ed. Diana Whaley. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.

“Germanic Prosody.” In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed., ed. Romand Greene and Stephen Cushman, 557-9. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

“Old English Literary Language.” In English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook, 2 vols., ed. Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton, Volume 1, pp. 385–98. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012.

“Anglian Features in Late West Saxon English.” In Analysing Older English, ed. David Denison et al., 63-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.