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. The theme of the poem consists of a poet’s meditation over the structures and the grandeur of those who built and occupied those structures. The opening lines poignantly remind the reader of a sense of the transience of glory: “Fate has smashed these wonderful walls, / This broken city, has crumbled the work / Of giants“ (1-3). (All quotations are from the translations of Burton Raffel in Poems from the Old English if not otherwise indicated.) The opening is strongly emotional and somewhat abrupt for the unprepared reader, but the contrast of the smashing Fate with the giant work of human efforts is so effectively appealing as to carry the sense of mutability and mortality in the mind of the reader. And then the speaker again switches his perspective to the specific ruins of broken towers, roofs and gates up to line twenty. The description is more general than specific, which is characteristic of all Old English poetry. The speaker is not positively identified, nor are any proper names of the places given. In other words, there is a tendency in the Anglo-Saxon elegy to generalize personal emotion and to expand it into a universal picture of melancholy and tragic view of human life. That is a unique difference from the overtone of the modern personal elegy. In the first twenty lines of the poem, the introductory mood is reinforced by words with destructive connotation: “crumbled,” “fallen,” “collapsed,” “rooting,” “dissolved” and “crashed” (1-20). The thematic tone A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 29 is unmistakable up to this point. In the analysis of Old English poetry, the individual image is rather misleading due to the gap of time, space, and culture between the past and the present; therefore, the overtone or mood will be employed more effectively in the analysis of the elegy. In lines 21 to 23, the poet’s imagination moves back to the days of glory and grandeur in contrast to the mood of the previous and following lines. This contrast seems to deepen and widen the grief of the speaker: “It was a shining city, filled with bath-house, / With towering gables, with the shouts of soldiers, / With dozens of rousing [drinking-halls],” but fate destroyed all this human glory in the end (21-23). Lines 25-32 again offer a detailed repetition of the first 20 lines as the rest of the poem presents a detailed picture of the past glory. The forts, camps, city and temples are all gone in a “heap of tumbled stones” (32). Then the rest of the poem is devoted to the description of the wealth and happiness now gone irrevocably. The images of wine, golden armor, surging heat, and glowing heart build into the mood of glowing brightness. Though the last part of the poem is destroyed between lines 43 to 49, the ubi sunt formula is unmistakably clear--“Life was easy and lush” (41). Structurally, this poem consists of two parts, each of which is composed of the description of the ruins and then the recollection of the past glory and happiness. This is a short poem with an excellent structural balance that develops the transience theme in a contrastive manner for the amplification of the elegiac mood of irrevocable loss. The poem “Deor” is obscure, highly allusive, and structurally unique. But as the poem moves toward its end, the theme of mutability combined with a sense of isolation becomes prominent. From line 35 on, the poet introduces himself as a minstrel who once “sang / For the Heodenings, and held a place / In my master’s heart” (35-37). He enjoyed his good service to his lord for many years, but a more skillful bard took his place 30 Jin, Kwang-hyun and honor: “My honors away, struck his harp / And stole my palce with a poet’s skill” (40-41). By turning to historic and legendary stories (the legends of “Weland the Smith,” “Theodoric” and “Eormanric,”) he minimizes his misfortune. The poet consoles himself and the reader by placing his misfortune and humiliation at the end of the poem after the legendary misfortunes of a larger magnitude which promise an improvement in human fate. In contrast to “The Ruin” in which the fleeting time or the relationship of man with time is central, “Deor” shows the relationship between men in developing the ubi sunt theme. Another difference is that Deor’s sorrow is personal despite the universalized mood of sorrow and misfortune stemming from the legendary stories. This poem is significant in many respects. First, the structure consists of six strophes and six refrains at the end of the strophes. Second, the legends used in the poem suggest that the continental legends were largely introduced to the Anglo-Saxons so that the brief allusions made in the poem were sufficient to be perceived by the general reader. Third, the coexistence of Old Teutonic saga and Christian doctrine shows the rich texture of the Old English literature. It is a pagan poem based on Teutonic paganism, but the Christian is also prominent: “They sat . . . lost / In thoughts of endless pain. / And yet they could have followed the silent footsteps / Of God . . .” (28-31). In Anglo-Saxon poetry, highly characteristic is the combination of two opposite elements, a pagan sense of transitoriness and Christian security. The Anglo-Saxon poetry, more specifically the elegy, has been most enriched by this seemingly impossible and philosophically intertwined view of life. The poem “Wulf and Eadwacer” is structurally similar to “Deor” in employing strophes and refrains for poetic effects. But unlike “Deor,” the narrative or dramatic soliloquy consistently centers around the theme of A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 31 separation from the beloved. The tone is bitter and realistic. The speaker is a woman lamenting for her outlawed lover “Wulf,” and her thought of revenge is intended for her tyrant husband “Eadwacer.” Greenfield identifies the poetic form as “an impassioned example of the ‘Frauenlied’, a type of medieval lyric placing in the mouth of a woman a lament of love” (A Critical History 224). The theme of separation and exile is also clearly indicated. The image of the island is symbolic of the separation and isolation: “Wolf is in an island, I on another. / An island of forts, surrounded by swamp” (4-5). She laments the separation from her lover by external forces, which leads to the exile theme on the part of her lover. The reason for exile is not clear, but he is forced to go into exile on another island: “Will they receive him, if he comes with force?” (7) and “Hope has wandered in exile, with Wolf” (9). In the narrative of a female speaker, the emotional sensitivity is expressed in the form of the pathetic fallacy that compares her tears with rain: “When the rain was cold and my eyes ran red / With tears . . .” (10-11). Toward the end of the poem, a pagan feature is given in the thoughts of revenge on her husband. She plans to give the child from her detested husband to a wolf: “The wolf will carry / Our wretched suckling to the shade of the wood” (16-17). “A Woman’s Message” or “The Wife’s Lament” again deals with the relations between men and women. The poem is a dramatic dialogue in which the speaker, a female, was forced to go into exile, taking up her dwelling in a cave under an oak tree while her husband has gone beyond the sea. Shaken by the miserable state of her mind and the undiminished love for her husband, she expresses the contrasting feelings between the happiness of love in the past and the frustration of isolation. The first line sets the tone of sorrow, and the sadness is personal; “This song of 32 Jin, Kwang-hyun journeys into sorrow / Is mine” (1-2). The initial mood is further strengthened by the words of misery through the entire poem: “sadness,” “misfortune,” “sorrow” and “grief” (3-4). In lines five and ten, the theme of exile appears, and the separation from her husband is contrived by her in-laws and is forced upon her: “The darkness of exile droops on [her] life,” and she “[accepts] exile as payment for hope” (6, 8). And the theme further develops, intensifying the sense of isolation: “My new lord commanded me into a convent / Of wooden nun, in a land where I knew / No lovers, no friends” (15-17). Then the exile theme is contrasted with the ubi sunt theme, and her grief deepens:

How gaily, how often, we’d fashioned oaths Defying everything but death to endanger Our love; now only the words are left And our friendship’s a fable that time has forgotten And never tells. (21-25)

The relationship has deteriorated, and the remembrance of the lost love is poignant. Then the bewailing woman is left with no hope: “There are few things more bitter / Than awaiting a love who is lost to hope” (52-53). There is no God the suffer can turn to for consolation, but there is only a stoic endurance in coping with personal anguish. The speaker’s attitude is effectively summed up by Michael Alexander in his Old English Literature:

More generally characteristic of Anglo-Saxon is the oppressive emotional tension and reproach entailed in the fatal influence of mistaken decision in the past upon a hopeless present stoically endured, a situation and feeling broodingly imprinted in a bleak landscape. (127)

This kind of attitude is representative of many Anglo-Saxon elegiac A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 33 personae whose psychology is frequently strained by the tension between the fate or external force and simultaneously the stoic and religious endurance. “The Husband’s Message” is the least elegiac in tone so that critics have questioned its generic label of elegy. Yet the poem still contains the exile theme and the contrast between the past and the present in a different sense that the future is better than the past. In this sense this poem can be easily distinguished from other elegies. Another characteristic is the relations between man and woman just like in “The Wife’s Message.” As the poem opens, a tablet of wood or a staff delivered to the wife by her husband in exile calls the wife to join her husband who has overcome his miseries in exile and is now in prosperity. He promises a new glory and fortune to his wife. The exile theme is briefly mentioned in the poetry, but there is no sense of pain: “Your people fought, and the feud / Brought him exile” (19-20). Since the miseries have been overcome, there is no need to dwell on them anymore. The picture is not dark or elegiac in the true sense of the word. Immediately before the theme of exile, comes the ubi sunt motif which contrastively compares the happy days of the marriage and the exile: “Back to the love and the pledges you shared, / You two . . . could walk unharmed across this festive / Town, the land yours and you / Each others” (15-19). But these two themes rather insignificantly treated in the second section, and the third section is completely devoted to the prosperity and glory of his new life. In contrast with “The Wife’s Message,” this poem gives a less emotional view of separation in the eyes of a male persona. It is a chivalric, courtly and unpessimistic poem. In the first two sections, the speaker is a staff on which the story is carved, which is called the “prosopopoiea”--representation of an absent person as speaking. This 34 Jin, Kwang-hyun rhetorical technique contributes to the reduction of the sentimental effect in the poem, but it still shows a mood of emotional intimacy and a romantic tone. Another significant aspect at the end is a weaving into the text of runic letters, which eludes any conclusive interpretation except that it renders emotional strength to the husband’s oath. “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” are unquestionably accepted as the masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon elegies. The poems deserve their reputation because of their thematic unity, structural balance, emotional and psychological depth, moral vision stemming from the synthesis of the Teutonic paganism and Christianity and also because of their realistic description and elegiac spontaneity. Yet it is also true that due to the historical and linguistic gap between the Anglo-Saxon minstrel and the modern reader, there lies an inevitable complexity in interpretation. In comparison to the minor elegies discussed previously in the paper, “The Wanderer” excels in its sustained intensity of the emotional power and its realism, which are balanced and skillfully combined to add to the thematic development. The emotional intensity is compelling, but not sentimental, and the realistic description of nature makes the personal suffering universal and transcendent of time. Thematically, the poem contrasts earthly insecurity and transitoriness with heavenly security and immutability, incorporating Christian and pagan values in the context of the exile theme and the ubi sunt motif. In the opening lines, the Christian moral vision of the poem is prominent, but the tone immediately switches into a tragic vision of life through the realistic and metaphoric perspectives of exile: “This lonely traveller longs for grace, / For the mercy of God; grief hangs of / His heart . . . / He cuts in the sea, sailing endlessly, / Aimlessly, in exile” (1-5). And then the poem moves to the first monologue of the two (lines 8 to 62a). The wanderer laments his journey of exile with neither comfort A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 35 nor any companion. The picture is dark, filled with the realistically descriptive language of misery and misfortune: “So I, lost and homeless, / Forced to flee the darkness . . .” (20-21) and “How cruel a journey / I’ve travelled, sharing my bread with sorrow / Alone, an exile in every land . . .” (29-31). Up until line 39, only the exile theme dominates the poem, leaving no room for the recollection of the past glory and happiness. The emotional intensity never slackens until line 39: “He only knows who never sleeps / Without the deepest dreams of longing” (39-40). And then the speaker turns to the illusions of his past happiness and his lord to no avail: “And I open my eyes, embracing the [air]” (45). By using the pronoun “he” first in the monologue, he generalizes and reduces the intensity of his own miseries in his mind and then draws on the ubi sunt theme. The first monologue in general depicts “the sorrow of a pagan whose soul is darkened with sorrow, who has nowhere to turn, no way out; Fate is inexorable” (B. F. Huppe 526). The bridge passage (lines 626-87) between the two monologues show a Christian reflection on earthly things and the stability of heavenly things in direct contrast to the pagan view of human suffering and exile in the first monologue. The speaker turns into a wise man detached from his misfortunes to some extent: “Wisdom is slow, and comes / But late. He who has it is patient . . .” (64-65). This kind of philosophical fusion is one of the most significant features of Anglo-Saxon poetry which B. J. Timmer explains in “Heathen and Christian elements in Old English Poetry”:

The heathen poetry was not discarded by the poets and writers of early Christian times. On the contrary, its spirit was used to form the basis of the new poetry that was meant to strengthen people in their belief. (181)

The second monologue (lines 92-110) heavily relies on the ubi sunt 36 Jin, Kwang-hyun motif with no specific reference to God. The exclamatory speech seems to be intended to emphasize the speaker’s emotional agony over the transitory nature of the world and his life: “Where is the war-steed? Where is the warrior? Where is his war-lord?” (115). The sense of vanishing reality is the controlling idea in this passage: “Fortune vanishes, friendship vanishes, / Man is fleeting, woman is fleeting, / And all this earth rolls into emptiness” (108-10). The last six lines are reserved for the Christian didacticism. The speaker in the previous lines is a pagan, but after the keen awareness of the vanishing reality and fleeting time, he turns to God for “the heavenly rock where rests our every hope” (115). Despite some critical opinion that the Christian conclusion was arbitrarily imposed and limited the elegiac and dramatic effects, the poem is an excellent entity with a refined weaving of the theme, language, mood and structure. “The Seafarer” is more difficult in interpretation and extreme in tone than “The Wander” despite a great similarity in structure and theme. As for the structure, the poem divides into two parts. First, lines 1-67a are for the pagan transience theme coupled with a heroic disregard for the present life, which is used later as an inducement to the Christian eternal life. Next, lines 64-124 present a shifting perspective to the Christian yearning for eternity in God. As in “the Wanderer,” the shift seems abrupt, which leads to the various possibilities of interpretation of the poem. One possibility is that the second part was later interpolated by Christian clerks, and another possibility is that the poem is a Christian allegory, and the seafarer is a pilgrim. But, considering that this kind of suddenness is characteristic of Old English poetry as a unique poetic method to present secular themes first and then to expand them into Christian didacticism, the literal and conventional interpretation makes more sense in view of the Anglo-Saxon cultural and historical background. A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 37

The poem “The Seafarer” begins with a persona in exile, speaking directly to the reader. Up to line 29, the persona develops the theme of exile through his detailed story of the lonely and dangerous winter sea voyage. The language is less elegiac and emotional than “The Wanderer,” but the tone is stronger due to the realistic description of physical hardship. In lines 30-38, the seafarer suggests that his exile is a self- imposed one: “I put myself back on the paths of the sea” (30). It is his moral strength to achieve personal fame and immortality by doing heroic acts, an attitude which is truly pagan and which leads him to the voluntary exile despite great anxiety and pain. And at the same time, this moral strength or the contemp for the world transforms into a Christian moral vision in the unique Anglo-Saxon poetic context. The seafarer’s wisdom is the fruit of the voluntary efforts unlike that of the wanderer, whose exile is forced externally. The second part of the poem is more Christian than any other elegies discussed in the paper, including “The Wanderer.” In lines 64-80, the tone is dominantly Christian with a keen sense of the inevitability of death and a stress on the necessity of recognizing the heavenly kingdom where “with the angels, life [is] eternally blessed / In the hosts of Heaven” (79-80). The seafarer’s spiritual growth derives from a long passage of the transitory motif in lines 81-102: “All glory is tarnished. / The world’s honor ages and shrinks, / Bent like the men who mould it” (83-85). The persona grows from the despair and suffering of the sea-faring to the awareness of the eternal joy in God. He learns the fear of God and comes to long for “Heaven” (80). And then the same thematic tone continues in the final passage with much lessened elegiac charm due to the monotonous didactic lecturing. 38 Jin, Kwang-hyun

III

In conclusion, Anglo-Saxon poetry continues to elude the understanding of the modern readers, but once the barrier of culture and language is removed, individual poems immediately come alive in the imagination of the reader. The mood, theme, imagery and structure of Anglo-Saxon poetry are, to some extent, remarkably modern or rather universal. The theme of exile is prophetic of the twentieth century motif of individual isolation, and the tragic view of life which is inherent in any mature and sensitive minds develops from the ubi sunt motif. In that sense, the Anglo-Saxon poems are not only the stories of the past, but also of the present human suffering and efforts to overcome it. From the literary perspective, it is meaningful to establish the thematic patterns of the poems in the historical context since they are revelatory of the Anglo-Saxon social ethos. First, the exile theme shows the relationship between an individual and his society. A man displaced from society is not a man in the real sense of the word, lacking social duty and political loyalty. Second, the synthesis of paganism and Christianity reflects the Anglo-Saxon social and philosophical aspects. The contradicting elements were woven into an enriched and diverse cultural texture. Third, the ubi sunt theme is expressive of the tragic view of life. The Teutonic heroic view of life based on paganism and physical power inevitably led to the pessimistic view of the present world.

Works Cited

Alexandar, Michael. Old English Literature. New York: Schocken Books, 1983. Print. A Thematic Approach to Old English Elegies 39

Chadwick, H. Munro. “Early National Poetry.” The Cambridge History of English Literature. New York: The Knickerbocker P, 1907. 21-44. Print. Green, Martin, ed. Introduction. The Old English Elegies. London: Associated UP, 1983. Print. Greenfield, Stanley B. A Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York UP, 1965. Print. . “The Old English Elegies.” Continuation and Beginnings. London: Nelson, 1966. Print. Huppe,́ B. F. “The Wanderer: Theme and Structure.” Journal of English and Germanic Philosophy 42 (1943): 516-38. Print. Raffel, Burton. Poems from the Old English. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1964. Print. Shippey, T. A. Old English Poetry. London: Hutchinson UP, 1972. Print. Stapleton, Michael. The Cambridge Guide to English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Print. Timmer, B. J. “Heathen and Christian Elements in Old English Poetry.” Neophilologus 29 (1944): 180-85. Print.

Kwang-hyun Jin Address: University of Ulsan, 93 University Drive, Nam-gu, Ulsan, Republic of Korea, 44610 E-mail: [email protected]

Received: 2016. 07. 09 / Reviewed: 2016. 07. 30 / Accepted: 2016. 08. 08