English

EDUCATION:
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Harvard University, 1968
B.A., English and Comparative Literature, New York University, 1962

Printable C.V.

INTERESTS: Literature and history of Northwest Europe in the early medieval period (700-1100), esp. Anglo-Saxon England and Viking Scandinavia; Old English poetic style; Northern legend; Victorian and twentieth-century medievalisms; the afterlife of Tacitus

My research and teaching focus on all aspects (literary, historical, archaeological) of early England and Scandinavia, but I also belong to that crypto-group of poetry people attracted to verse of all periods and places. Looking back, I see that most of my essays have had a polemical purpose, exploring the hidden expressive powers of literatures that were new more than a millennium ago.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

-- Old Norse Court Poetry (1978)

--“Some Uses of Paronomasia in Old English Scriptural Verse” (1972)

--“The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History” (1982)

--“Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle” (1984)

--“Germanic Legend in Old English Literature” (1991)

--“Beowulf and Sutton Hoo: The Odd Couple” (1992)

--“The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet” (1993)

--“The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Philologist” (1997)

--“The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet” (2000)

--“The Discreet Charm of the Old English Weak Adjective” (2003)

-- "A Scandal in Toronto: The Dating of Beowulf a Quarter-Century On" (2007)

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES: Major English Poets; Old English; Chronicles of the Vikings

GRADUATE COURSES: Introduction to Old English; Beowulf; Old Norse; Directed Reading in Advanced Old English and Old Norse