UNIVERSITY OF ASIA PACIFIC

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

ENG 110 OLD ENGLISH POERTY IN TRANSLATION

Topic: The Wanderer

Submitted To:

Prof. S.M. AmanullahHeadDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Asia Pacific, Dhaka

Submitted By:

Nafis KamalReg. No.: 13116003

Tasneem E Zannat Reg. No.: 13116004

Janatul Bakiya Reg. No.: 13116007

Priyanka Barua Reg. No.: 13116009

First Year Second SemesterDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Asia Pacific, Dhaka

Date of Submission: February 26, 2014

26 February 2014

Prof. S M AmanullahHeadDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Asia Pacific

Subject: Submission of Assignment

Dear Sir,

Please, find enclosed our written assignment on ENG 110 (Old English Poetry in Translation). The topic for the assignment was “The Wanderer”.

The term paper as given is a part and parcel of Course Code. ENG. 110 titled Old English Poetry in Translation taught in this semester. We are indeed very grateful to you for making us exercise on such an important an interesting area of the subject. We have enjoyed studying on the topic and we are thankful to you for offering us such an interesting topic.

For our study purpose we have taken the help from prevalent book, which we have mentioned in the Bibliography at the end of the paper for your kind information. But we have got the guideline from your class lecture for which we are again thankful to you. We have tried to amass knowledge authentically.

We therefore humbly request you to accept our assignment.

Regards,

------------------------------------------Nafis Kamal (Reg. No.: 13116003)

-------------------------------------------Tasneem E Zannat (Reg. No.: 13116004)

--------------------------------------------Janatul Bakiya (Reg. No.: 13116007)

---------------------------------------------Priyanka Barua (Reg. No.: 13116009)

The Wanderer

By Anonymous poet

“The Wanderer”- is a poem which written in Old English and generically grouped into lyrical elegy featured with monologue. It’s written by an anonymous poet of Anglo-Saxon period, who gives a brief introduction and conclusion, and the Wanderer, an aging warrior who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. It fulfills the elegiac traits. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his kin. In nature he finds no comfort, for he has set sail on the wintry sea. Poignantly the speaker dreams that he is among his companions and embracing his kin, only to awaken facing the gray winter sea and snowfall mingled with hail. In the monologue’s second portion, the wanderer reflects more generally on man’s fate, urging resignation and control of emotion as ways of meeting adversity.

Like, old English elegiac laments both the language and the structure of the wanderer is difficult. The wanderer is arguably the most famous and critically- debated Anglo-Saxon poem, and there are multiple interpretations of it. The poem is admittedly difficult to decipher for several reasons. First of all, there could be more than one narrator, as the poem fluctuates between personal experience and general advice. Additionally, there is a hidden layer of metaphor alluding to the relationship between pagan and Christian themes. “The Wanderer” is an elegy composed of alliterative meter that focuses on the Wanderer’s loss of his lord, his subsequent grief, and his search for wisdom.

‘The Wanderer’ contains essentially of two speeches linked by a moralizing passage. A close study of the poem provides us the sense that the first speech (from verse eight to fifty-seven) is like an autobiographical account made by ‘home- stepper’ a word meaning ‘wanderer’ or ‘grasshopper’. His weird is to roam the seas in search of a lord to replace his dead ‘gold-friend’. From the verse eight, he speaks in the first person like that of an

autobiographer giving a personal account of his lamentation of a solitary man who had once been happy in service of a loved lord but who now, long after his lord’s death and the passing away of that earlier time of happiness and friendship, has become a wanderer journeying the paths of exile across the icy sea. In his sea life, he doesn’t find his near and dear ones and feels the pangs of loneliness. Now he has become helpless, shelter less and friendless.

In “the Wanderer” we find a moralizing verse, which connects the two speeches. This moralizing verse is called ‘Gnomic Lines’. The poet very successfully breezed up the 1st step-2nd – 3rd step, having the moralizing verse. These gnomic lines changed the mood of the poem at a stroke.

The second speech in “The Wanderer” in the form of bleak soliloquy sounds a wise man’s utterance which seems to be directed against the world as a whole. The second speech is full of, conventional moralizing words which broadly cover- virtues of a wise man, folly of boast making, the transience and futility of earthly life, destruction or death as an inevitable end of life and no genuine possession or acquisition, all is lent. At the beginning of the second speech, the speaker concentrates on the virtue of a wise man. No man can grow wise without confronting the adversities or vicissitudes of life because it is not always a smooth sail. A Wiseman remains composed ‘he is not too hot-hearted’, does not make haste pronouncement ‘not too haste in speech’, he is bold and courage ‘not too week a warrior, does not lack in ‘forethought’, lust cannot seize him ‘not to greedy of goods, ‘he is not too glad nor to mild’, nor is he ever too eager to boast’ before he appreciates all with reasons the virtues mentioned are traditional in outlook but they do contain a universal essence. A man must wait, when he spokes in boast, until he knows clearly, sure-minded, where the thought of his heart may turn. ’All glorious life is subject to decay, bright days, and days of happiness, misery and extinction. So, nothing is permanent.

"The Wanderer" has been preserved in the Exeter Book, the biggest manuscript collection of Old English poetry in existence. “The Wanderer”-

belongs to the type of the elegy – the Anglo Saxon elegy. “The Wanderer” conveys the meditations of a solitary exile on his past happiness as a member of his lord’s band of retainers, his present hardships and the values of forbearance and faith in the heavenly lord. The poem has a Christian frame work by a prologue and epilogue. The prologue and epilogue are structured in five lines. In the first one and a half lines of the prologue and in the first one and half lines of the epilogue, reference is made to the mercy of God. In the prologue the poet laments his misfortune. In the epilogue the poet express a religious theme of faith in god and seeking help to Almighty God. So, it can be said that the lament of “The Wanderer” is an excellent example of the elegiac mood so common in old English poetry.

Bibliography

Amanullah, SM. Anglo-Saxon Poetry in Translation, 1st ed. Dhaka: Friends’ Book Corner, 2012. 129-132