The Wanderer

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The Wanderer is a 10th century Old English poem recorded in the Exeter Book . It includes 115 alliterative verses. The date of origin is unknown, but it is most likely before the year 1070 AD, as it is part of an older culture of oral tradition.

classification

The Wanderer is a melancholy poem and belongs to the elegy genre. At the same time it is a ubi sunt poem (“Where are they (got to)?”), In which the loss of the speaker's clan is deplored. With “hwær cwom” (“where did they go”) the old English equivalent of ubi sunt can even be found explicitly in this poem.

Language and content

The language of the poem is artful, the Old English allusion is used in a skillful way, e.g. B. in Vs. 52f:

g reteð g liwstafum, g eorne g eondsceawað
secga g eseldan;

("He greets them happily, looks at them gladly, the warrior's companions").

There are also examples of kenning , which is cultivated as an art , the replacement of simple words with new compositions, e.g. B. "goldwine" (vs. 22, "gold friend") for lord or king (who rewarded his vassals with gold, especially rings), or "ferðlocan" (vs. 13, "treasure chest of the soul") for spirit or Sense.

In this poem, the speaker, a man of advanced age, recalls the happy days he spent in the service of a master, and the battles and strokes of fate that robbed him of his clan. He thinks about his isolation as the last of his gender and advocates that warriors should make well-considered decisions, neither let themselves be carried away by greed nor quick anger to actions that will doom him and his clan in the long run.

Leitmotifs

In addition to the ubi sunt motif mentioned above, the Anglo-Saxons' belief in fate can be seen in The Wanderer , which was (probably only later) overlaid with Christian elements.

For example, belief in almighty destiny occurs in Vs. 5 revealed: “Wyrd bið ful aræd!” (“Fate is inevitable!”); Christian influences can be found v. a. in the last verse, where it says:

Wel bið þam þe him are seceð,
frofre to Fæder on heofonum, þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð.

(“It is good for those who seek forgiveness, consolation with Heavenly Father, with whom all our security rests”).

Similar works

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