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A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies* * 현대영어영문학 제60권 3호 Modern Studies in English Language & Literature (2016년 8월) 23-39 http://dx.doi.org/10.17754/MESK.60.3.23 A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies* * Jin, Kwang-hyun (University of Ulsan) Jin, Kwang-hyun. “A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies.” Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 60.3 (2016): 23-39. This paper aims to study a group of representative Old English Anglo-Saxon poems classified as elegies. These poems (“The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” “The Ruin,” “The Wife’s Lament,” “The Husband’s Message,” “Deor” and “Wulf and Eadwacer” in the Exeter Book) share common thematic characteristics such as a pessimistic view of transitoriness, mutability of human efforts, exile, isolation from the loved ones, the ubi sunt motif and stoic endurance to hardship. However, Anglo-Saxon poetry is not only pessimistic and tragic, but also demonstrates substantial Christian influences such as the vision of Christian kingdom, eternal joy in God and spiritual growth in heavenly blessing. Such a weaving of opposite philosophical veins (Christianity and Teutonic paganism) offers the modern reader a rich and wide literary spectrum and cultural context in the understanding of the Anglo-Saxon elegiac poetry. For close analysis, this paper has carefully examined diverse aspects of the poems such as thematic unity, imagery, poetic structure, psychological depth, moral and religious vision, elegiac beauty and poetic realism. (University of Ulsan) Key Words: ubi sunt motif, Anglo-Saxon elegy, Teutonic paganism, mutability, Christianity I In Old English poetry based on the Teutonic tradition and history, there is a group of poems that are conveniently classified as elegies due to largely lamenting and melancholic overtones. Despite their unknown authorship and composition dates, their emotional appeal to the modern reader is so compelling that these poems have continuously incited the * This paper was funded by the University of Ulsan in 2016. 24 Jin, Kwang-hyun reader’s imagination and curiosity. But the obscurity of the poems’ origin has also caused a substantial controversy as to the theme, structure, style, poetic personae, and historical tradition. The split of the academic views has, nevertheless, not deterred our proper understanding of the poems, but rather broadened and sharpened our insight to them. Amid diverse possibilities of interpretation, this paper will focus on a single coherent thematic approach to the elegiac poems found in the Exeter Book: “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” “The Ruin,” “The Wife’s Lament,” “The Husband’s Message,” “Deor” and “Wulf and Eadwacer.” The main focus of the paper will be the shifting perspectives of the poetic characters from the mutability of the world and subsequent isolation to the permanence and stability in the heaven of God. II As for the historical side of the poems, the Anglo-Saxon poetry was written by the Teutonic tribes that invaded Britain from the end of the fifth century on. At the time, Britain was already conquered and christianized by the Romans, and the Teutonic invaders began to be civilized by the Christian culture of the conquered. By the seventh century, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes became partially civilized and settled down with such aspects of culture as law and agriculture, and Anglo-Saxon literature began to appear. Between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, the orally-transmitted stories were preserved in writing by Christian clergymen, and this fact explains the infusion of substantial Christian influence into Old English poetry. The Anglo-Saxon poetry extant at presents reveals both aspects of paganism and Christianity. At a time when the Anglo-Saxons came to A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 25 Britain, they brought their own oral tradition of heroic poetry which was purely pagan, and this aspect persisted in the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition despite the growing and later dominant Christian philosophy. As for Old English elegies, these two contrasting ideas of Christian and heroic ideals coexist passage after passage in alternating imagery and structural patterns. And yet the pagan elements were later substantially curtailed and retouched by Christian clerks while the stories were transcribed for preservation. The Old English poetry is largely classified in two groups, Christian and pagan or Teutonic. This classification is, to some extent, arbitrary, and the borderline is not clear between the two groups. But it is useful in putting Anglo-Saxon elegies in historical and literary perspectives. The Christian poetry is the one whose subjects are drawn from Biblical and ecclesiastical traditions and simultaneously from the religious view of Christian origin, and the Teutonic poetry deals with the Teutonic history or tradition and at the same time the customs and conditions of English life. In “Early National Poetry,” H. Monro Chadwick labeled the second group of poetry as the “national poetry” and sub-classified it into the epic and the elegy (21-23). As implied in the classification, the elegy is less Christian with a substantial amount of Teutonic and pagan elements in comparison to the purely Christian poetry. The elegiac poems, however, still demonstrate the prominent influence of Christianity in imagery and theme. The Anglo- Saxon elegies are generally taken as the works of minstrels rather than literary men, and their subjects were drawn from typical characters and situations. Among about ninety Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in existence, there are only six that are of any substantial length, and four manuscripts are of great importance: the Junius Manuscript, the Vercellic Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf Manuscript. The Old English elegies are in the Exeter Book which is, according to Michael Stapleton in The Cambridge 26 Jin, Kwang-hyun Guide to English Literature, a collection of Old English poetry donated to the Exeter Cathedral library by Bishop Leofric in the eleventh century: “The manuscripts were executed some time during the latter half of the tenth century but the poems themselves are much older, some possibly as old as the sixth century and originating in minstrelsy” (293). The book contains about 117 poems, but the number is not definitive because of the uncertainty as to where one poem begins and another leaves off. A brief overview of the book is made by T. A. Shippey: “Many of the poems are neither saints’ lives nor Biblical paraphrase, but undeniably secular, ranging from obscene riddles to the heroic consolation of ‘Deor’ and the minstrel’s catalogue of ‘Widsith’” (82). The Old English elegy is the relatively short reflective or dramatic poems describing a sense of loss and isolation, and frequently a contrasting sense of consolation. In “The Old English Elegies,” Stanley B. Greenfield explains that: the elegies “treat of universal relationships, of those between man and woman [and] between eternity and time [in] a hauntingly beautiful way . They, moreover, call attention in varying degrees to the transitory nature of the pleasures and security of this world.” (142) The insightful but succinct statement needs further elaboration for better understanding. First of all, the phrase “a hauntingly beautiful way” seems to suggest an elegiac strain, beautiful and universal, but poignant. The emotional appeal of the elegiac strain is strong because the beauty and poignancy of the elegy are so original and true to universal minds. The tragic view of life and the contrasting stoic fortitude also give a growing aesthetic sense to poetic overtone as clearly seen in “The Seafarer” and “The Wanderer.” The stoic attitude is essential in maintaining the aesthetic of the elegy by preventing the emotional intensity from degrading into A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 27 sentimentalism and by allowing the stoic acceptance of a moral destiny. One prominent theme of the Old English elegies are the stoic and religious endurance in pursuit of the Christian ideal of immutability, eternity and timelessness. Second, the “universal relationship” suggests one of the key themes in the Old English elegy--exile and isolation. The personal elegy whose subject is the death of an individual differs in mood and scale from old English elegy in which the concern is rather social and public than personal. In The Old English Elegies, Martin Green explicates the theme of isolation and exile in the Anglo-Saxon social context: In that picture the comitatus, the complex structure of relationships of a warrior to this companions and his lord that defined each man’s identity, obligations, and responsibilities, was the source of all value and the locus of all positive emotions. Separation from the comitatus [would] be the greatest of sufferings. (15) As in “The Wanderer,” the image of exile in the sea is directly contrasted with that of the tribal hall which is representative of joy and stability, deepening a sense of grief and suffering. Third, the “transitory nature” of the world immediately translates into a deep sense of the tragedy of life. The ubi sunt theme is the central feature of the Anglo-Saxon elegy, that evokes a consciousness of the mutability of the world and of the fleeting glory of human efforts. In A Critical History of Old English Literature, Greenfield says: Although they [the elegies] are to differing degrees secular or Christian in their content and attitudes, they have in common two overlapping concerns: (1) a contrast between past and present conditions, and (2) some awareness of the transitory nature of earthly splendor, joy and security. (214) 28 Jin, Kwang-hyun The sense of irrevocable loss central to the ubi sunt theme leads the poet or a man in general to the awareness of transitoriness and of the lack of stability, as in “The Ruin.” In the elegies, the ubi sunt motif carries the thematic focus from which come other themes such as exile, isolation, stoic and/or religious endurance. Just as the theme of transitoriness is the preoccupation of “The Ruin,” the manuscript of the poem itself was partially damaged by fire; as a result, two parts--lines 12-19a and 42b-49--are fragmentary.
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