scholarly journals The Paradox of Context

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
László Iliásics
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Retrospective View ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Wanderer

The aim of this paper is to resolve the paradoxical nature of the juxtaposition of Germanic pagan with Christian teachings and ideas in Old English elegies. First, the most relevant notions of religious encounter are discussed. Then, the notion of 'Wyrd,' the Germanic fate motif, shall be introduced. Subsequently, after giving a concise summary of the history and story of The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the paper deals with the narrative structure of each, then analysing their relevant parts in depth. The paper also elaborates on the phenomenon of 'progression.' The word is here used to refer to the shift in tone (from earthly to transcendent) which occurs to emphasise the importance of the new religion and is achieved by presenting Christian teachings as consolation for the exiled protagonists. In The Wanderer, the pagan retrospective view is exchanged for the eschatological, while in The Seafarer the development from a lament to sermon is what will be the means of this consolation.

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).

Linguistic facts and the interpretation of Old English poetry

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Wanderer

In their admirable edition ofThe WandererDunning and Bliss give the meaning ‘as when’ forswain line 43bpinceð him on mode pæt he his mondryhtenclyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecgehonda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ærin geardagum giefstolas breac (41–4)and defend their gloss in the following words: ‘Here literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments.’ And in his latest book, Stanley B. Greenfield approves: ‘Thus Bliss–Dunning…can properly say that though usage ofswameaning “as when” here “would be unique”, but [sic] “literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments”.’ I do not approve. I would say that Dunning and Bliss have let literary considerations outweigh not linguisticarguments, but linguisticfacts. Hence my title.

Melmoth the Wanderer

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Maturin ◽  
Chris Baldick
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Gothic Novel ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
The Devil ◽  
The Wanderer

abstract Written by an eccentric Anglican curate, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new fever pitch of intensity. Its tormented villain seeks a victim to release from his fatal pact with the devil, and Maturin’s bizarre narrative structure whirls the reader from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island, from a London madhouse to the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition.

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.

Facing the Eternal Desert: Sociotemporal Values in Old English Poetry

KronoScope ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-253
Author(s):  
Rosemary Huisman
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Old English ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
The Social ◽  
Singular Noun ◽  
Narrative Time

Abstract Time is a singular noun, but includes a multiplicity of temporalities, including what J. T. Fraser has termed sociotemporality. In this paper, I discuss facing the urgency of time in a narrative dominated by sociotemporality, that of the Old English poem Beowulf, and suggest how criticism of the narrative structure of Beowulf has derived from a monovalent understanding of narrative time. Moreover, in recognizing sociotemporality as dominant in the organization of the poem, the modern reader can gain greater access to what was valued in the social context of its response to “the urgency of time.”

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.

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