Robert D. Fulk
Email | 812-855-1943
Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor of English
Adjunct Professor Germanic Studies
Ph.D., English, University of Iowa, 1982
M.F.A., Fiction, The Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, 1976
M.A., English, University of Chicago, 1974
B.A., English, Oakland University, 1973
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 the press listing, here for supplementary materials), and with Christopher M. Cain he wrote A History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 2002; click here for the press listing). 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. With Stefan Jurasinski, he recently completed an edition of the Old English Canons of Theodore, to be published by the Early English Text Society in 2012, and his Introduction to Middle English will be published in 2011 or 2012 by Broadview Press. Soon 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, 9 vols. (Turnhout, 2007-) are 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 Web site. He teaches particularly in the areas of Old and Middle English language and literature, as well as medieval Irish and Welsh language and literature.
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Recent Courses
L711: Old English Literature
L710: Beowulf
G603: Celtic Languages and Literatures (Old Irish, Middle Welsh)
G602: Middle English
G601: Old English
G405: Studies in English Language
G302: Structure of Modern English
E301: Literatures in English to 1600
L202: Literary Interpretation
Career Highlights
On his accession, Fulk found himself facing a coalition of Odo I, count of Blois, and Conan I of Rennes. The latter having seized upon Nantes, of which the counts of Anjou held themselves to be suzerains, Fulk soon laid siege to it, routing Conan’s army at the battle of Conquereuil (27 June 992) and re-establishing his suzerainty over Nantes. Then turning his attention to the count of Blois, he proceeded to establish a fortress at Langeais, a few miles from Tours, from which, thanks to the intervention of the king Hugh Capet, Odo failed to oust him. On the death of Odo I, Fulk seized Tours (996), but King Robert the Pious turned against him and took the town again (997). In 1016 a fresh struggle arose between Fulk and Odo II, the new count of Blois. Odo II was utterly defeated at Pontlevoy (6 July 1016), and a few years later, while Odo was besieging Montboyau, Fulk surprised and took Saumur (1026). Satisfied with his accomplishments, Fulk died peacefully on 21 June 1040, just 970 years before his fifty-ninth birthday.
Selected Publications (click images for more information)
Books:
Richard M. Hogg & R. D. Fulk. A Grammar of Old English, Volume 2: Morphology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
R.D. Fulk, ed. The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and The Fight at Finnsburg. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, edd. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2008.
R.D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain. A History of Old English Literature. With a chapter on saints’ legends by Rachel S. Anderson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002. Corrected paperback edition, 2004.
John C. Pope, ed. Eight Old English Poems. 3rd ed. rev. by R.D. Fulk. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001.
A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Articles:
“Anglian Features in Late West Saxon English.” In Analysing Older English, ed. David Denison et al. To appear from Cambridge University Press in 2010.
“Ouer and Ouer Again in the Peterborough Chronicle.” To appear in Philological Quarterly 88 (2010).
“The Roles of Phonology and Analogy in Old English High Vowel Deletion.” Transactions of the Philological Society 108 (2010), 126–44.
“Localizing and Dating Old English Anonymous Prose, and How the Inherent Problems Relate to Anglo-Saxon Legislation.” In English Law Before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver, and Andrew Rabin, pp. 59–79. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
“History in Medieval Scandinavian Heroic Literature and the Northwest European Context.” In Epic and History, ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub, 328–46. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
“Anglian Dialect Features in Old English Anonymous Homiletic Literature: A Survey, with Preliminary Findings.” In Studies in the History of the English Language IV: Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of English Language Change, ed. Susan Fitzmaurice and Donka Minkova, 81–100. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009.
“English as a Germanic Language.” In A Companion to the History of the English Language, ed. Haruko Momma and Michael Matto, 142–9. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
“Some Emendations and Non-Emendations in Beowulf (Verses 600a, 976a, 1585b, 1667b, 1740a, 2525b, 2771a, and 3060a).” Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 159–74.
“Archaisms and Neologisms in the Language of Beowulf.” In Studies in the History of the English Language III: Managing Chaos: Strategies for Identifying Change in English, ed. Christopher M. Cain and Geoffrey Russom, 267–87. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007.
“Old English Meter and Oral Tradition: Three Issues Bearing on Poetic Chronology.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106 (2007), 304–24.
“The Etymology and Significance of Beowulf’s Name.” Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007), 109–36.
David N. Dumville, R.D. Fulk, and Andrew Reynolds, edd. Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007). Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen.
“The Textual Criticism of Frederick Klaeber’s Beowulf.” In Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey, ed. Andrew Wawn, 131–53. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
“Old English þa ‘now that’ and the Integrity of Beowulf.” English Studies 88 (2007) 623–31.
“Some Lexical Problems in the Interpretation and Textual Criticism of Beowulf (Verses 414a, 845b, 986a, 1320a, 1375a).” Studia Neophilologica 77 (2005), 145–55. [Appeared in 2006.]
“The Origin of the Numbered Sections in Beowulf and in Other Old English Poems.” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 91–109.
“Six Cruces in Beowulf (Lines 31, 83, 404, 445, 1198, and 3074–5).” In Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, I, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 349–67. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
“Afloat in Semantic Space: Old English sund and the Nature of Beowulf’s Exploit with Breca.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005), 457–74.
“Six Cruces in the Finnsburg Fragment and Episode.” Medium Ævum 74 (2005), 191–204.
“Old English weorc: Where Does It Hurt? South of the Thames.” ANQ 17.2 (2004), 6–12. [Response to Roberta Frank.]
“Old English Poetry and the Alliterative Revival: On Geoffrey Russom’s ‘Evolution of Middle English Alliterative Meter’.” In Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations, ed. Anne Curzan and Kimberley Emmons, 305–12. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004.
“Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore.” In Sex and Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Memory of Daniel Gillmore Calder, ed. Carol Braun Pasternack and Lisa M. Weston, 1–34. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004.
“The Name of Offa’s Queen: Beowulf 1931–2.” Anglia 122 (2004), 614–39.
“Old English werg-, wyrg- ‘Accursed’.” Historische Sprachforschung 117 (2004), 315–22.
“Some Contested Readings in the Beowulf Manuscript.” Review of English Studies, n.s. 56 [no. 224] (2004), 192–223.
