David O'Neil
Please join me in congratulating David O’Neil, a PhD student in English language and linguistics, on being named the winner of the 2017 The Medieval Journal/Saint Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies for the essay “A Syntactic Basis for the Distribution of Metrical Types in Beowulf.”
David’s primary research focuses on the history of English alliterative verse. For his dissertation, he examines syntactic change in early English as a somewhat surprising driver of metrical change in the poetic line. In addition to explaining the decline of the alliterative tradition, this research also helps explain why meters such as Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter became so integral to English language poetry, despite being completely different from the alliterative meter used by the Anglo-Saxons.
During his graduate studies at Purdue, David has taught courses in English composition, Latin, and Ancient Greek.
Congratulations, David
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts