LIT 306 Week Four Short Paper 1

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Feb 20, 2024

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Troya Hohlfeld LIT 306 Medieval Literature Southern New Hampshire University Professor Olivia Buzzacco May 25, 2023 4-5 Short Paper: Medieval Literature Midterm Paper The Anglo-Saxon elegy poem "The Wife's Lament" is an important part of history because it is written from the point of view of a woman during a time when men dominated society. Even though it is written from a woman's point of view, it could be written by a male monk because they were the only people in society who could read and write. The poem tells the story of a wife who was grieving the loss of her husband and the difficulties she encountered adjusting to his new extended family and country. We can assume, despite the lack of specifics, that the wife was relocated to live with her new husband and family because of an arranged marriage. Proficiency was scant among most individuals during that time. The spouse was left with no correspondence with her loved ones and was amidst encountering her most memorable division, which is exhibited all through the sonnet. This should be visible in the initial not many lines of the sonnet as the wife says, “What sufferings I endured since I came of age, both the new and old, never more than now. I must endure without end the misery of exile.” (Greenblatt and Abrams, vol. A) The poem centered a lot on the idea of going away. The theme of exile is also present in the conclusion, but it is addressed to the husband rather than the wife as she laments her treatment and declares that her husband has exiled himself to a life without love. The poem's final four lines demonstrate this. “My weary friend or in this case, the husband sits in a desolate home. He must suffer much in his mind, remembering too often a happier place. Woe unto him

who languishing waits for a loved one.” (Greenblatt and Abrams, vol. A) In addition, alliteration and metaphor are two additional literary techniques that are prevalent throughout the poem. Similar-sounding word usage is a memory strategy used to help the speaker and the audience of sonnets that are being told orally. "My husband's kin had hatched a plot" (line 11) and "The dales are dark and the dunes high" (line 30) are two examples of this. The analogy is the most imperative abstract technique that spotlights the impression of female jobs at the time in " The Wife's Lament.” The article titled "The Grieving Goddess: Pagan Elegy in The Wife's Lament” composed by Ahmad Banisalamah and Rabab Ahmed Mizher, claims that the wife in The Wife's Lament is a representation of agnosticism. Agnosticism was supplanted with Christianity, changing from a conviction framework that commended and regarded the natural mother and reflected the rich periods of nature to the reverence of one, masculine being. "Insistence by the early Church on the primacy and divinity of Christ left little room for an Anglo-Saxon paganism that treated the female divine as equal to its masculine counterpart," (Banisalmah and Mizher) Banisalamah and Ahmed Mizher define the shift. The poem "The Wife's Lament" appears to be outlined as a metaphorical desertion of feminine spirituality in paganism enforced by the figure of Christ after reading and reflecting on the wife's hurt and exile. The husband and his family exemplify this, which demonstrates the ongoing decline in female influence and importance in Anglo-Saxon society.

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