'Fun' Facts Flashcards
What is the Exeter Book and when was it compiled?
It is a miscellany of Old English verse compiled in 975
What is the structure of Deor?
42 lines, stanzaic structure (6 stanzas), refrain
What is a language feature of Deor?
alliteration
Who is Weland the Smith and where else is he found?
A legendary master blacksmith captured and fettered by Nithad, rapes Nithad’s daughter Beadohild; also found on the Franks casket and in Völundarkviða
Who is Mathilde?
Magnild foresees her own death by drowning in a river; Geat builds a bridge over the river to forestall this; she drowns anyway???
Who is Theodoric?
Ostrogothic emperor 493-526, imprisoned Boethius
Who is Eormanric?
King of the Ostrogoths, c. 350-75
What is the position of The Wanderer in the Exeter Book?
Follows longer poems on religious subjects.
Precedes collection of wisdom literature and other poems bearing similarities to wisdom literature (elegies, riddles)
What is an (Old English) elegy?
Elegy’ originally applied to Latin and Greek poems in elegiac couplets (sometimes, but not always, on mournful subjects)
Now applied to poems of lament, especially for the dead
What does Greenfield say about elegies?
Contrast loss and consolation, based on a specific personal experience or observation and expressing an attitude towards that
What does Klinck say about elegies?
They are based on absence and separation
What is the structure of The Seafarer?
Monologue, two parts: seafaring, reflection
What genre is The Wanderer like?
Wisdom poetry, concerned with right behaviour
What are key themes in Celtic poetry?
Loss, mourning, nature, wisdom, cuckoo’s!
How are The Wife’s Lament and The Husband’s Message similar?
Emotional suffering, separation over the sea, loneliness, relation of past events, reference to past vows
Where is The Husband’s Message in The Exeter Book?
After Riddle 60
How is The Seafarer eschatological?
It is concerned with man’s soul
What does Dorothy Whitelock think about The Seafarer?
The voyage is taken for spiritual reasons
What does Schucking think about The Seafarer?
The journey is an allegory of the journey of the soul from the trials of this world to the next
What does Peter Clemoes think about the ‘lone-flier’ in The Seafarer?
He notes parallels to passages of Alcuin, talking about the spirt breaking away from the body and flying across sea and land, the strength of the human mind cannot be confined by the body
