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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
The nineteen-line Old English poem known as Wulf and Eadwacer has proved a notorious lodestone and analytical trap for critics; and still another interpretation of it may seem futile, if not presumptuous. Nevertheless, I believe no more firmly in my interpretation than others have believed in theirs: that is, I am no less confident that it will clear up most of the verbal and situational mysteries the poem presents; that it will enable us to see the lyric as structurally whole; that it will help us appreciate even more its aesthetic qualities; and that it will gain a critical consensus. To achieve such modest goals, I shall have to consider assumptions about the mind-set of the Anglo-Saxon audience as well as the poem's structure, diction, tone and imagery. It will thus be well to have the poem before us, and I venture a poetic translation which I shall comment on in due course.
1 I follow the text of The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp, George Philip and Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936)Google Scholar, though the punctuation, stanzaic divisions and capitalizations are my own.
2 For a convenient summary of this history, see Fanagan, John M., ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: a Solution to the Critics' Riddle’, Neophilologus 60 (1976), 130–7, at 130–1 and 136–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 The former was proposed by Sedgefield, W. J. (‘Old English Notes’, MLR 26 (1931), 74–5)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the latter by Fry, Donald K. (‘Wulf and Eadwacer: a Wen Charm’, Chaucer Rev. 5 (1970–1971)Google Scholar
4 Anderson, James E., ‘Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Soul's Address: How and Where the Old English Exeter Book Riddles Begin’, The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research, ed. Green, Martin (Rutherford, Madison and Teaneck, NJ, London and Toronto, 1983), pp. 204–30, at 226.Google Scholar
5 Frese, Dolores W., ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: the Adulterous Woman Reconsidered’, Notre Dame Eng. Jnl 15 (1983), 1–22Google Scholar, and Osborn, Marijane, ‘The Text and Context of Wulf and Eadwacer’, New Essays, ed. Green, pp. 174–89.Google Scholar
6 Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature 1 (New York, 1960), 20Google Scholar; cited by Frese, ‘The Adulterous Woman’, p. 5.
7 Osborn, , ‘The Text and Context’, pp. 183–4Google Scholar. The Lewis passage she cites is from The Allegory of Love (New York, 1958), p. 3.
8 Lines 1–14.
9 ‘The Adulterous Woman’, p. 8.
10 ‘The Text and Context’, p. 184.
11 Stanley, E. G., The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1975)Google Scholar; first published as a series of articles in N&Q 209–10 (1964–1965).
12 Cf. Davidson, Clifford, ‘Erotic “Women's Songs” in Anglo-Saxon England’, Neophilologus 59 (1975), 451–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who cites the Cambridge Songs in Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5.35, a copy written at St Augustine's, Canterbury, in the middle of the eleventh century.
13 Malone, Kemp, ‘Two English Frauenlieder’, Comparative Lit. 14 (1962), 106–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An exception is Jensen, Emily, ‘Narrative Voice in the Old English Wulf’, Chaucer Rev. 13 (1979), 373–83.Google Scholar
14 A few critics have emended or otherwise attempted to find a masculine speaker in these poems, especially in The Wife’ Lament; but Ruth Lehmann reminds us that ‘[t]he introduction of the woman's voice and point of view has parallels in Irish stories with poems spoken by women characters’ (Lehmann, R. P. M., ‘The Metrics and Structure of Wulf and Eadwacer’, PQ 48 (1969), 151–65, at 156Google Scholar). See further Fell, Christine, Women in Anglo-Saxon England (Indianapolis, 1984), pp. 68–70.Google Scholar
15 Adams, John F., ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: an Interpretation’, Mod. Lang. Notes 73 (1958), 1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Fanagan may have made this suggestion earlier: ‘it is most appropriate that the destruction by Wulf of her alliance with Eadwacer … should be expressed by such a metaphor’ (‘A Solution’, p. 135); but his statement and its context are unclear. Johan Kerling (‘Another Solution to the Critics’ Riddle: Wulf and Eadwacer Revisited’, Neophilobgus 64 (1980), 140–3, at 141) reads Fanagan as seeing a literal child, while Baker, Peter (‘The Ambiguity of Wulf and Eadwacer’, SP 78 (1981), 39–51, at 50Google Scholar) reads him as suggesting that ‘hwelp is not a child at all, but rather a metaphor for the relationship of the speaker and Eadwacer’. Emily Jensen had advanced this theory in an unpublished MA thesis of 1965 (private communication), but reverted to the literal child in her ‘Narrative Voice’.
17 Adams, ‘An Interpretation’, pp. 2 and 4.
18 Renoir, Alain, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: a Noninterpretation’, Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr, ed. Bessinger, Jess B. Jr, and Creed, Robert P. (New York, 1965), pp. 147–63, at 150–1.Google Scholar
19 Baker, ‘The Ambiguity’.
20 On overlapping and distinction between Old English ‘elegies’ and ‘riddles’, see Klinck, Anne L., ‘The Old English Elegy as a Genre’, Eng. Stud. in Canada 10 (1984), 129–40, at 133.Google Scholar
21 Keough, Terrence, ‘The Tension of Separation in Wulf and Eadwacer’, NM 77 (1976), 552–62, at 555–6.Google Scholar
22 Most critics who have taken the word as a common noun rather than a proper one have translated ead- as ‘property’; but ‘happiness’ is a frequent meaning and fits my reading perfectly. The only reader, who takes ead- here as ‘happiness’, so far as I am aware, is Jensen (‘Narrative Voice’, p. 380); but her analysis is quite different from mine.
23 E.g., Baker, ‘The Ambiguity’, p. 50.
24 See Green, Martin, ‘Time, Memory, and Elegy in The Wife’ Lament’. New Essays, ed. Green, pp. 123–32, at 125.Google Scholar
25 Stanley, E. G., ‘Old English Poetic Diction and the Interpretation of The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Penitent's Prayer’, Anglia 73 (1955), 413–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 See Klinck, ‘Genre’, p. 133.
