Reflecting on exeter elegies - Book Report/Review Example

Reflecting on Exeter elegies Exeter Book is a very significant Anglo-Saxon poetry collection. Through examination of “The Wife’s Lament”, “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer,” each and every reader is capable of gaining insight into kind of lives being led by women and men in early Society of the Anglo-Saxon. The necessity of comitatus, the credence that all things are ruled by fate, the credence in temporal human life nature, the part of men as brave warriors, and women’s role as peace weavers are among the important aspects lying within these art works.

The mutual thread existing between “The Wife Lament” and “The Wanderer” is evident; the kind of sorrow experienced over loved ones’ loss and the effort to verbalize the subsequent isolation remains relevant even to date.The Seafarer mirrors the difficult life at sea (Conner, p65). He compares his solitude to land dwellers’ life; the speaker changes his poem tone to express his continuous traveling. This implies that his exile is self-imposed. Critics who perceive “The Seafarer” to be an allegory concludes that the ‘exile’ is basically Adam and his broods who were cast away from Garden of Eden.

“The Wanderer” is an elegy, or the dead’s lament and past glories. The poem’s narrator has lost one of his own kin in a war and is left wandering alone and contemplating life’s temporal nature. The warrior is away which gives the poem the aspect of exile. The warrior has been in isolation and exile.“The Wife Lament” speaker just as that of “The Wanderer” is lamenting her isolation and exile, though in this scenario, it seems that the speaker is commenting about her separation from the husband.

All these scenarios in these three poems bring the aspect of exile in comparison. Works CitedConner, Patrick W. Anglo-saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993. Print.