Dr. Geoffrey Russom

Biography

Geoffrey Russom is a Professor Emeritus specializing in Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, and Old Irish literary cultures, and he is known for his contributions to linguistic theory and poetic form. He authored several significant works, including 'Old English Meter' (1987), 'Beowulf and Old Germanic Metre' (1998), and 'The Evolution of Verse Structure in Old Middle English Poetry' (2017). His research has focused not only on English verse form but also on the linguistic history of English and the multicultural backgrounds represented in 'Beowulf'. Russom has highlighted the artistic excellence of preliterate verse traditions and has made known arguments illustrating how the rules of poetic meter can be abstracted to analogously operate like new linguistic rules in ordinary language. His teaching repertoire includes courses on the History of the English Language, Old English Language and Literature, Old Irish Language and Literature, Old Norse Language and Literature, Linguistic Stylistics, and Metrics.

Research Interests