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In all cases we have filmed the best available copy. Universi^ Micrailms International 300 N. ZEEB RD„ ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 8209424 Goodall, James lane THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES: A STUDY OF STRUCTURE, CULTURAL CONTEXT, AND GENRE The University of Oklahoma PH.D. 1981 University Microfilms Internetionsl 3% N. Zeeb Rœd. Ann Arbor. M I 48106 PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark V 1. Glossy photographs or pages. 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. Photographs with dark background______ 4. Illustrations are poor copy______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy. 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page. 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages i / 8. Print exceeds margin requirements_____ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine______ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print. 11. Page(s) __________ lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Pags(s)___________ seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages numbered_________ _. Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages_____ 15. Other_________________________________________________ _ University Microfilms International THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES: A STUDY OF STRUCTURE, CULTURAL CONTEXT, AND GENRE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the . degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY J. LANE GOODALL Norman, Oklahoma 1981 THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES: A STUDY OP STRUCTURE, CULTURAL CONTEXT, AND GENRE APPROVED BY 4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The number of friends and acquaintances who have offered support is so large that I cannot mention them individually. As I reflect on the contributions of my committee I can be more specific. To Professors French, Barnes, and Kendall I am indebted for a careful reading of my paper and many help­ ful suggestions. To Rudolf C. Bambas I am grateful for wonderfully prompt attention to my linguistic needs and val­ uable guidance in matters of bibliography. Paul G. Ruggiers, with whom I have worked so happily .for six years, read my various drafts with infinite patience and gave freely of his own time to inspire me to complete my task. Finally, my debt to my wife, Paula R. Goodall is the one least easily expressed. This enterprise has taken rather longer than either of us expected, but she has borne the various delays and postponements with good will and forbearance. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION..................... 1 Chapter I. A STUDY OF THE STRUCTURE OP THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES, ......................... 7 II. THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES................... 68 III. GENRE AND THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES................ 116 CONCLUSION............................... 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................181 IV THE OLD ENGLISH ELEGIES; A STUDY OF STRUCTURE, CULTURAL CONTEXT, AND GENRE INTRODUCTION In 1974 John C. Pope retracted an article he had written nine years earlier in which he reintroduced the possibility of dramatic voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer. In the case of The Wanderer, Pope's retraction meant that he went back to what is called the "prevailing view" of the poem, that is, that there are not two different speakers in the poem, and that the eardstana and the snottor on mode are the same person who has undergone a process by which his powers of reason and presumably his sensibilities have been enlarged. This is essentially the same view of The Wanderer proposed in 1869 by Max Rieger. Such reversals are not unheard of in scholarship, but when they occur they seem to demand a fresh attempt to reassess the approaches applied to the works considered, to see whether various scholars mean the same thing in their use of terminology, and to determine the precise nature of the expectations they bring to a work. The group of Old English poems commonly referred to as 1 the elegies is one of the best-known categories in all of medieval literature. But the elegy is far from a tidy genre because early in the critical history of Old English litera­ ture "elegy" was used more as a convenient term of reference for poems that shared certain characteristics of tone and content than as a strict statement of taxonomy. At one time or another. The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, Resignation, The Riming Room, Wulf and Eadwacer. Deor, and The Ruin have all. been classified as elegies. As scholars examined them more and more closely, they were forced to define their conception of "elegy"— and then some tended to exclude from the genre certain of the poems listed above. But they all chose different poems to exclude— and thus probably the only thing everyone will agree on is that all of the poems listed above are in The Exeter Book. My own attempts to define the limits of the Old English elegy point up the following working definition. The elegy is a dramatic monologue ranging in length from fifty lines to just over a hundred. Characterized by lamentation in varying degrees of intensity, it contains a rich description of a vanished past which causes the speaker to reflect on the effects of the passage of time. I decided to exclude from my own study Wulf and Eadwacer, Deor, and The Ruin. Wulf and Eadwacer, though I grant it is a dramatic monologue, is so short and so obscure that very little is to be gained from comparing and contrasting it with the poems I have included. Though it contains a kind of love lament which reminds one of The Wife's Lament, the lack of development of the circumstances surrounding it precludes any further comparison. Deor, though it is certainly full of lament, is as much catalogue as it is dramatic monologue. The quality of grief is so superficial and automatic that this poem, too, would be unprofitable as a subject of comparison. In my treatment. The Ruin is conspicuous by its absence. It is surely one of the greatest of all Old English poems; it surely contains a rich expression of lament for a lost way of life, an ingredient that virtually everyone will agree is elegiac. The quality of lament is quite close to that of The Wanderer. particularly because of the way a scene of ruin evokes reflection on the transience of human life and achievements. What it lacks and what I require based on my own feeling for genre is the existence of a first-person voice, an identifiable persona. I realize that it is cus­ tomary to assume a persona even in third-person narration, but in the poems that I have chosen there is an ic-figure present for analysis. The bulk of the criticism devoted to the elegies falls into three categories: studies of structure, cultural con­ text, and genre. In what follows I have set aside a chapter for each. The structural studies show a trend away from the ear­ lier suspicions that poems like The Wanderer and The Seafarer are rough and unwieldy mixtures of pagan and Christian elerr ments. It would be extreme to claim that opinions based on the assumption of interpolation are no longer extant. Still, scholars are now more willing to accept each poem as the product of a single poet with an integrated view of the materials he worked with. That is not to say that the poets' view of unity is the same as ours, but rather that the poet is given credit for more sophistication than the theories of interpolation are likely to allow him. Other issues of structural importance are the debates over the existence of speakers in the poems as well as the precise limits of their utterances.