Comparing Seafarer, Wanderer And Wife's Lament

Anglo-Saxon literature often expressed concepts of survival, battle, exile, male dominance in society, and loyalty to the lord. These aspects are strongly represented in both “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”. Both elegies deliver themes of self-exile and the mourning of lost companions. Ideas of longing and alienation are present in these two Anglo-Saxon poems through use of figurative language, structure, point of view, comparison, and various other literary techniques.

The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all contains faith verses fate. The three poems are very similar and very different. The three poems ranging from a lonely man, to a lost soldier, to a wife’s bedrail. The medieval poems show hurt, confusion, and loneliness.

Alliteration is defined as the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables. It is a literary device that authors use to bring attention to certain important ideas or concepts in stories. Alliterations allow the reader to bring their senses together to hear and feel what they are reading by bring in sounds of the world around us into literate. This helps the reader visualize the story, therefore helping the reader to remember it. It is used in many stories as a way to hide metaphors and other subliminal messages. For example, alliterations with the 's' being the prominent sound could be visualized as a snake slithering, making a character have a slyness about him. Specifically in Anglo-Saxon literature, alliteration is significant because it is how authors organized their poems or stories, includes repetition which aids memorization, and emphasizes important parts of the text that the author wants the audience to know. Alliteration in important in both “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament” because it helps evoke certain emotions and feelings by using the different functions of alliterative language.

In The Seafarer one difference is this is a self imposed exile. He was not forced to leave, he chose to leave. The speaker of The Seafarer says his journey is true and he remembers every little detail that happened to him while traveling the ocean in the middle of a cold winter. He experiences loneliness, and hatred for city people. He remembers his struggle through the long cold days. He believes he was called out and that is why he leaves his country. “Called me eagerly, sent me over the horizon.”

The Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, era of England lasted from about 450-1066 A.D. The tribes from Germany that conquered Britain in the fifth century carried with them both the Old English language and a detailed poetic tradition. The tradition included alliteration, stressed and unstressed syllables, but more importantly, the poetry was usually mournful, reflecting on suffering and loss.1These sorrowful poems from the Anglo Saxon time period are mimetic to the Anglo-Saxons themselves; they reflect the often burdened and miserable lives and times of the people who created them. The Anglo-Saxon poems, “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and “The Wife’s Lament,”

First of all, in “The Seafarer” the writer discusses the internal conflicts he is having among the waves of the sea. Even though this self-chosen exile causes this man pain and sorrow, peace is not a common entity for him while on land. “The time for journeys would come and my soul/ called me eagerly out, sent me over/ the horizon, seeking foreigners’ homes.” (lines 36-38). The gallant mortal does not doubt that there is no fear among his heart, but his longing for the tides is far too strong to be confined to the dry, lifeless land. His experiences only bring him back to where he feels at home the most - the sea. “But there isn’t a man on earth so proud,/…/he feels no fear as the sails unfurl/…/only the ocean’s heave; But longing wraps itself around him.” (lines 39-47). The way he shows his fearful arrogance is an example again of his internal conflict.

Isolation from society can evoke a deep loneliness and self-reflection. The poem "The Wife's Lament" from the Exeter Book expresses the desolation of exile. The dominant theme is the contrast of a happy past and a bleak present of isolation. The anonymous author of "The Wife's Lament" uses setting, tone, and conflict to develop the theme of great loss. He/she augments a situation in which meditation on life's past joys is the only redemption in a life sentenced to confinement. “The Wife’s Lament” is an excellent example of nostalgia, resentment of the present, and hopelessness about the future.

The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both

Unlike the wandering narrator, the seafaring narrator focuses his descriptions of the community that is present in nature. The seafarer the utterly rejects the notion that a “sheltering family / could bring consolation for his desolate soul” (25-26). This “sheltering family” (25) that the seafaring narrator alludes to in this line is the exact form of close-knit family that the narrator in “The Wanderer” laments for desperately. While the seafaring narrator offers striking similar descriptions of the landscape being “bound by ice” (9), he does not focus on these descriptions to dwell on the loss of an earthly community. Instead, the narrator in “The Seafarer” finds the landscape that he inhabits wonderfully abundant with natural — even spiritual — elements that are commonly associated with an earthly community. In the barren landscape, the seafaring narrator discovers “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served for music” (19-20) and “the curlew’s cry for the laugher of men” (20-21). These vibrant and vivid descriptions of the natural world that the narrator discovers in the harsh,

There are a lot of similar themes between the poems 'The Wanderer', 'The Seafarer' and 'The Wife's Lament'. One of the easiest themes I can point out is the use of the fact that they all wander, they're wandering through their lives not knowing exactly where to go, what to do or how to do it. They all feel lonely, sadness and grief. The hardships they all go through are different but still similar in ways. The way they deal with them are also different yet similar, The Wife searches for her husband and busies herself with thoughts of their lost love and old memories to distract and maybe even deal with the fact that she does not know what she is doing or where she is going, all she knows is that she loves her husband and longs for the love

The Seafarer by Burton Raffel was written during the Anglo-Saxon period where the Anglo-Saxon warriors lived to defend their King, like in the story Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. One of the warriors speaks about his challenges and begins saying that his story is not at all joyful. It is a story full of pain and suffering. The story paints a picture of what it means to be “dislocated”, “set out”, all by oneself and how badly it feels. “My feet were cast in icy bands, bound with frost,with frozen chains, and hardship groaned around my heart. Hunger tore at my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered on the quiet fairness of earth can feel how wretched I was”.(Raffel 1) The powerful imagery in this stanza sets the tone that the narrator is trying to

Throughout the history of British Literature, there have always been the themes of loneliness, torment or exile. Many times authors speak from their experiences and at times those experiences have to do with misery and discomfort with their lifestyles. In the Renaissance age, times were not always happy and people chose to pass on stories generation to generation to reveal their feelings and experiences. Poems made a great impact in easing the pain. In the poems, "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer", the themes of loneliness and exile exist throughout both of the poems. The unknown authors portray the two themes through detail and emotion.

“The Seafarer” and "The Wanderer” are both poems that describe the hardships of the average Anglo-Saxon warrior. These stories show that life during the times of the Anglo-Saxons is not pleasant. In fact, it appears to be tough, fearful, and depressing. In “The Seafarer”, a man describes his horrid life on the sea, and in "The Wanderer”, a man tells his tale of being put into exile and losing all his fellow warriors and lord. Both men feel physical and emotional pain while going through their adventure. The seafarer claims that the sea itself is torturing him by saying “...the sea took [him], swept [him] back and forth in sorrow and fear and pain.” (2-3) The seafarer also explains that coldness is much more than just a feeling but a

A man chosen as a seafarer endures alone in a blue abyss and survives through the harsh winds and hostile territory alone, with none to confide his suffering to other than himself, and virtually no reasons to continue the sufferation known as life, yet, despite the odds, he lives on, and tells his suffering in a poem known as “The Seafarer”. In “The Seafarer”, the author of the poem releases his long held suffering about his prolonged journey in the sea. While the poem explains his sufferings, the poem also reveals why he endured anguish, and lived on, even though the afterlife tempted him. Besides expressing his reasons to live, more importantly, the poem narrates the huge impacts of Christianity on him.

[and] so graced by God”. The speaker clearly uses alliteration to express his feelings towards his journey. He also establishes to the reader that he is influenced by a religious motive. His ideas may have contributed to the religious values the Anglo- Saxons believed in: Pagan, and Christian. The man also describes his experience on sea as he , “drifting [drifted] through winter on an ice cold sea, whirled in sorrow, alone in a world blown clear of love, hung with icicles. Through the use of imagery we can understand the isolated setting of the ocean, and how his loneliness led to a deepening sadness. Overall, “The Seafarer” influenced today’s literature through the use of various literary devices. The man’s personal feelings and ideas about