Wanderer, The (10th century). Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

The OLD ENGLISH poem The Wanderer, like THE
SEAFARER with which it is often linked, is one of the
best-known examples of ELEGAIC POETRY, poetry in
which the speaker laments some great loss. The
poem survives only in The EXETER BOOK, a manuscript
from about 975 that contains the largest surviving
collection of poetry in Old English.
The poem is divided into two main sections.
According to an unnamed Narrator, the first part
of the poem is spoken by an “Earth walker” (eardstapa),
or Wanderer, who, for 57 lines, laments his
state of exile. He has lost his lord, and with him
his companions and place in society, and now
wanders in hope of finding some new lord to take
him in. In particularly poignant lines, he describes
dreaming of the old days and the gifts of his lord in
the mead hall, only to wake and find himself still
wandering on the sea.
The second part of the poem, lines 58–110, expand
the theme of loss and isolation from the specific
case of the Wanderer himself to the world in
general. The speaker, here called the Wise Man, asserts
that all things on earth are transient, and will
be lost to violence and the ravages of time.Where
are the horse, the young warrior, the gold-giving
lord, the mead hall? All will vanish, the Wise Man
concludes. The poem ends with a very Christian
exhortation to put one’s faith in heaven, the only
place where joy is not transitory.
Critical issues in The Wanderer have revolved
around the relationship of the two parts of the
poem, and questions about the number of speakers
involved. At one time it was suggested that the
poem was actually an amalgam of two or more
separate poems. It has also been suggested that the
final lines, urging the reader to focus on heaven,
were added later by a monastic scribe to an otherwise
completely pagan poem. But most scholars
today consider the poem a unified whole. Still
scholars do not necessarily agree on who is speaking
in each part of the poem. If the Wise Man is in
fact the Wanderer whose exile has made him philosophical,
then one can see a growth in the Wanderer’s
outlook. If the second speech, or even the
final five lines of the poem, are attributed instead
to the Narrator, then we learn something from the
Wanderer’s example, but the Wanderer himself is
left in his bleak and melancholy existence.
Bibliography
Alexander,Michael, trans. The Earliest English Poems.
Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1966.
Green,Martin, ed. The Old English Elegies: New Essays
in Criticism and Research. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1983.
Krapp, George Philip, and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie,
eds. The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Records, 3. New York: Columbia University Press,
1936.

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *