The Literal-Figurative Identity of The Wanderer

PMLA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 79 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 366-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Rosier
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Wanderer ◽  
Poetic Composition

Dominant among the effects of some Old English meditative and elegiac poems is the paradox of simplicity. The premise might be advanced that the source of our wonder at, often mystification about, such poems as The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife's Lament is the fact that we are too far separated from the poetic consciousness which gave them being. But surely this would be a profitless premise to begin with, especially since our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture and society and learning is not uninformed. Yet our approach to these poems seems to be one of continual amazement and puzzlement, as the now numerous published critical, interpretive studies so well attest. And this is what I mean by the paradox: most of these poems are, in their essential statements, simple and direct; their themes of exile and transience, of resoluteness in the face of flux, of sorrow and hardship and deprivation are staple and often expressed in identical terms, such as the recurrent use of gnomic dicta and the catalogue of misfortunes or joys. Likewise, the vocabulary as vocabulary is static and conventional; the limited, insular hoard of commonplace simplices finds extension only in the native habits characteristic of bothpoetic and non-poetic composition, of affixation, derivation (e.g., anga, engu, langoð), and compounding, and the compounds themselves are more frequently than not transparent and, quite apart from their use in context, unexceptional.

Classical rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Knappe
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Oral Delivery ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Rhetorical Questions ◽  
The Wanderer ◽  
Three Phases

This passage fromThe Wandererdemonstrates some of the rhetorical techniques which have been noted in Old English texts. Its most striking features are the rhetorical questions and the figure ofanaphorawhich is produced by the repetition of ‘Hwær’. Another rhetorical element is the use of the theme(topos)ofubi sunt(‘where are…?’) to lament the loss of past joys. In classical antiquity, features such as these, which served to create effective discourse, were the products ofars rhetorica. This art was distinguished from the more basic subject ofars grammaticain that rhetoric, the ‘ars … bene dicendi’ (Quintilian,Institutio oratoriaII.xvii.37), aimed at thegoodproduction of text (for oral delivery) with the aim of persuading the listeners to take or adopt some form of action or belief, whereas grammar, the ‘recte loquendi scientia’, was responsible forcorrectspeech and also for the interpretation of poetical texts (‘poetarum enarratio’: Quintilian,Institutio oratoriaI.iv.2). In terms of classical rhetoric, the above passage fromThe Wanderercould be analysed according to the three phases of the production of a text(partes artis)which pertain to both written and oral discourse:inventio(finding topics such as theubi sunt),dispositio(arranging the parts of the text) andelocutio(embellishing the text stylistically, for example with rhetorical questions and other figures and tropes).How and under what circumstances did the Anglo-Saxons acquire their knowledge of how to compose a text effectively?

The thematic significance of enta geweorc and related imagery in The Wanderer

1973 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 253-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Frankis
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Final Section ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Wanderer

Our uncertainty about the full implications for poet and audience of particular words and phrases is a serious obstacle to our understanding of Old English poetry. With regard to the final section of The Wanderer (73–115) some advances in our knowledge and understanding have already been made, notably by Professor J. E. Cross in his studies of the Latin antecedents of two passages: he shows that lines 80–4 use the motif of the Fates of Men, with the Old English sum … sum … structure translating the Latin alius … alius …, and that lines 92–6 are based on the ubi sunt topos of the transience of life. This information gives us a better grasp of the impact these lines may have had on an informed Anglo-Saxon audience and helps us to evaluate the poem; but many details still remain unclear. The present study is concerned with the context of these two passages (73–105), and in particular with the puzzling image of ‘the work of giants’ that has been destroyed by God (85–7).

From Cognitive Linguistics to Historical Sociolinguistics

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier E. Díaz-Vera
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Face ◽  
Shame And Guilt

This paper focuses on the analysis of the different motifs that shape the linguistic expression of shame and guilt in Old English. Through the fine-grained analysis of the whole set of shame and guilt expressions recorded in a corpus of Old English texts, a network of literal and figurative conceptualizations for each emotion is proposed. On the basis of these expressions, I argue here that body-related expressions (either metonymic or metaphoric) occupy a very secondary role in the Anglo-Saxon imagery of shame and guilt. In clear contrast with this view of shame and guilt as instruments of social control, the Christianization of England implied the spread of new shame-related values and the growing use of a new set of embodied conceptualizations for the two emotions under scrutiny here, most of which have become common figurative expressions of shame and guilt in later varieties of English. The new expressions (e.g. SHAME IS REDNESS IN THE FACE and SHAME IS SOMETHING COVERING A PERSON) illustrate the shift towards a progressive embodiment of the new emotional standards brought by Christianization. According to these standards, rather than an external judgment or reproach, shame and guilt involve a negative evaluation of oneself. Furthermore, I argue here that these onomasiological changes are informing us on the lexical choices of Old English speakers and on the sociolinguistic factors that conditioned the development of new emotional styles (i.e., the different ways feelings were expressed and, surely, felt) in Anglo-Saxon England.

scholarly journals The metaphorical conceptualization of sadness in the Anglo-Saxon elegies

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Isabel Verdaguer ◽  
Emilia Castaño
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Term Trend ◽  
Physical Discomfort ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Long Term Trend ◽  
The Wanderer

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the predominant metaphorical conceptualization of sadness in three Old English elegiac monologues whose main themes are the pain and solitude of exile and separation. Taking as a starting point the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and briefly reviewing the experimental evidence that supports the experiential grounding of our conceptualization of sadness, as well as our own previous research on the Old English expressions for emotional distress, we analyze the use of sadness metaphors in the elegies The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife’s Lament. This analysis clearly shows that in the Old English period, as in present day English, sadness was largely expressed in metaphorical terms. Cold, darkness and physical discomfort were recurrent source domains in its depiction, which suggests a long-term trend in the metaphorical conceptualization of sadness, whose cognitive reality is empirically supported by experimental research.

The maritime imagination and the paradoxical mind in Old English poetry

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonina Harbus
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
The Body ◽  
Suitable Model ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Mental Experience ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Wanderer

AbstractThe specifically maritime imagination of Anglo-Saxon poets resolves the potentially incongruous metaphorical models of the mind in this culture as both an enclosure and a wandering entity. The dual containing and travelling aspects of the ship provide a suitable model for the embodied yet metaphysical mind, and act in conjunction with the widespread metaphor of life as a sea voyage to produce a coherent means of imagining how the mind operates in relation to the body. The Wanderer and The Seafarer illustrate how acutely this conventionalized way of representing physical and mental experience relies on the sea voyage as both the setting for and metaphorical representation of a human consciousness that is both enclosed in the body and also able to transcend the physical.

From Whale’s Road to Water under the Earth: Water in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill A. Frederick
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Face

This chapter begins with the axiomatic premise that nature was no friend to the Anglo-Saxons: exile into the wilderness often equated with both physical and spiritual death and the power of water was equally frightening. We have only to look to the quintessential locus for the image of the Anglo-Saxons’ distrust and fear of the sea, lines 850-866 of Christ II, which presents life as a journey over difficult seas. In Beowulf, the mere of Grendel’s mother gapes as a kind of hell-mouth, while even the fragmentary description of the mysterious baths in The Ruin uses language reminiscent of the destructive flame of Beowulf’s dragon. On the face of it, Old English poetry provides no evidence of practical uses for water except as a method of transportation; nevertheless, the poetic manifestations of Anglo-Saxon antipathy towards water may well demonstrate the ways in which the figurative language can denote the physical realities of sea, mere, and river during the period.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Scholarly Contribution ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter contextualizes the philological study of language during the nineteenth century as a branch of the evolutionary sciences. It sketches in outline the two phases of poetic Anglo-Saxonism for which the rest of the book will subsequently argue in more detail. Moreover, the relationship between Anglo-Saxonism and nineteenth-century medievalism more generally is articulated, and historical analogies are drawn between nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and more recent political events in the Anglophone world. Finally, the scholarly contribution of Fossil Poetry itself is contextualized within English Studies; it is argued that ‘reception’ is one of the primary objects of Anglo-Saxon or Old English studies, and not merely a secondary object of that field’s study.

Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Grammars

2020 ◽  
pp. 942-956
Author(s):  
Patrizia Lendinara
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon

This chapter surveys Old English glosses of Latin works in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and discusses the format of glosses, the types of texts that were glossed, hermeneutic texts, merographs, dry-point glosses, glossae collectae, class glossaries, and alphabetical glossaries. The author also treats the production and study of grammar in Anglo-Saxon England, touching on the works of Bede, Tatwine, Boniface, Alcuin, Priscian, and Aelfric.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

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