The Wanderer

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The Wanderer

• Translated by Charles W. Kennedy

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The Wanderer

• This work is considered the most nearly perfect
  in form and feeling of all the surviving Old
  English poems.

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The Wanderer

• Dates back to 700 AD when Scandinavia was in
  upheaval. Immigrants used songs and poems to
  keep their homelands alive.

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Exile separation from ones home or native
country

• For an Anglo-Saxon warrior this meant losing his
  Lord and his mead hall.

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Wraecca

• a word meaning wretch, stranger, unhappy man,
  and wanderer

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Literary Terms you need to know

• Stoicism
• Tone
• Litotes
• Motif

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Stoicism

• a state where a human does not show or feel any
  emotion completely indifferent, not just hiding
  feelings

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Tone

• the attitude of a literary work toward its
  subject and the audience (formal vs. informal,
  humorous vs. serious)

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Litotes

• a characteristic figure of speech in Old English
  poetry a form of understatement in which a
  thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its
  opposite (think double negative) (ie. She was
  not unkind She was kind)

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Motif

• a recurring literary element that serves as the
  basis for expanding the narrative (music When
  it is heard, the couple falls in love.)

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First motif found in The Wanderer

• Ubi sunt que ante nos fuerunt? (Latin for
  Where are they who before us went?)
• Lines 90 94
• They are nostalgic or seeking the past.

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Second motif found in The Wanderer

• Mutability the inevitability of change. Things
  are going to change.
• This is at odds with the concept of nostalgia.
  As a result, this poem has 2 conflicting motifs
  in action.

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The Wanderer in a nutshell

• A stoic wraecca is at sea remembering the mead
  hall and his lost life.

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Reading Poetry in general

• Dont stop at the end of a line, stop at the
  punctuation mark. The end of the line has to do
  with the beat of the line it has nothing to do
  with the meaning of the line. Reading to the
  punctuation mark is called enjambment.