Wanderer

Even some of the qualities ascribed to a wise warrior are given to love: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (1 Cor 13:4). Patience is attributed to both charity and a wise warrior, as not puffing up oneself is comparable to refraining from a boast. Furthermore, the lamenting style of both “Beowulf” and “The Wanderer” is reminiscent of the writings in some of the Psalms and Proverbs, as well as the book of Ecclesiastes. The lone wanderer cries: “’Where did the steed go? Where the young warrior? Where the / treasure giver? / Where the seats of fellowship? Where the hall’s festivity? / Alas bright beaker! Alas burnished warrior! / Alas pride of princes! How the time has passed, / gone under night-helm as if it never was!” (92-96). This passage corresponds markedly to Ecclesiastes, which states: Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour, which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he…

This is the Anglo-Saxon Anthology of poetry. There are three poems in this Exeter book, consisting of The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament. These poems are dramatic monologues, which means there is only one speaker and he/she is talking to someone. Interesting fact, in Anglo-Saxon time period women didn’t have any power, but in this Exeter book one of the poems has a female speaker. With that said, that is one thing which makes the Exeter book…

In both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”, the idea of one day achieving heaven soothes the feeling of loneliness in the physical world with one of comfort. The subjects’ description of setting and the expression of his thoughts in both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” hints that the subject feels lonely in the physical world. In “The Wanderer”, the Wanderer uses his setting to convey this mood, describing his surroundings as, “grey stretches of tossing sea” and “hail storms darken and driving…

Thi Nguyen Dr. Jillian Round 2382.001 9 October 2015 Wanderer above the Sea of Fog In 1818, Caspar David Friedrich creates the piece “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” which tells a story, using oil on canvas about a man dressed in dark clothing overlooking a vast body of fog with his back turned towards the viewer. The main subject is a man in a dark green coat leaning on a cane and a rock with bright orange red hair. He’s standing upon a mountain comprised of dark browns and blacks. In the…

Anglo-Saxon literature was centered around one common theme, exile. The exile in literature is often about the banning of a person from a place. Most writers in this time period wrote an elegy for the things they miss from their time before their exiled. Some writers were forced into exile by others for political reasons while others fled for their own safety. As seen in “The Seafarer”, “The Wanderer”, and “The Wife’s Lament” exile was a major anxiety in Anglo-Saxon literature as the threat…

The Wander is an Elegy-style poem that depicts the suffering, exile, and memoirs of an anonymous narrator who refers to himself differently according to what part of his life he is sharing; a "Lone-dweller", an "Earth-stepper", ect. Although it is commonly believed that there is only one narrator, there is still a lot of debate on whether or not there was only one narrator throughout the poem or if there were several. The Wanderer is believed to have been created around the 5th or 6th…

The Wanderer and The Seafarer coincide through their spiritual and emotional longings to escape the changing society and exile themselves to the sea. During the Anglo­Saxon time period commoners of this dreary and gruesome time were often surprised with viking raids and the threat of a rapidly changing pagan society. In both poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer we are introduced to the idea of two humble individuals setting themselves apart from their own society and exiling themselves to…

being exiled could not do anything about it. During the protagonists exile, they experience hard times and emotional pain. The most noticeable similarity is that in both stories, the narrator is exiled from the society. However, they are exiled for different reason. In the wanderer, the protagonist is exiled because he deserted his allies in a time of battle. This was extremely dishonorable and the other members of the society banished him. In the seafarer, the protagonist exiles himself…

Achieving Self-knowledge from Quests Norton Juster, an American academic, architect, and popular writer, contemplates that “the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.” (Norton Juster) He says this to describe the quests that individuals have to overcome almost every day for one or another reason. Examples of quest stories are Huck Finn, The Lord of the Rings, North by Northwest, and Star Wars. Quest…

“The Wanderer”: A Literary Analysis “The Wanderer,” a short poem written during the Anglo-Saxon period, is an elegy regarding a warrior whose lord, friends, and land have been destroyed by war. Many elements of the poem bring its sorrowful message to life, such as the perspective it is told in, its elegiac tone common to the poetry of the time, its eloquent, descriptive diction, and, although not necessarily mournful, a transition into something more of a wisdom poem. Most of these qualities…