Old English Shorter Poems, Volume II: Wisdom and Lyric

by Harvard University Press

Overview

The twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalizing insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the perennial themes of love, separation, and the passion for vengeance. From suffering comes wisdom, and these poems find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. “Woe is wondrously clinging; clouds glide,” reads a stoic, matter-of-fact observation in Maxims II on nature’s indifference to human suffering. Another form of wisdom emerges in the form of folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf. The enigmatic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn combine scholarly erudition and proverbial wisdom. Learning of all kinds is celebrated, including the meaning of individual runes in The Rune Poem and the catalog of legendary heroes in Widsith.

This book is a welcome complement to the previously published DOML volume Old English Shorter Poems, Volume I: Religious and Didactic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674053069
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/28/2014
Series:	Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library , #32
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Robert E. Bjork is Foundation Professor of English and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University.