literature: The Dream of the Rood , The Wanderer and The Wife's Lament

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4,5

The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, and The Wife's Lament - Lesson Aims

Lesson Aims:

You can

- Share your reading experiences with literary works using proper arguments (on paper as well as in a conversation/presentation).

- Identify different types of literary texts and interpret them using literary terminology.

- Give an outline of literary history, placing literary works in the right perspective.

Themes The Dream of the Rood:

* Paganism and Christianity

Themes The Wanderer:

* Loneliness, suffering, and religion 

Themes The Wife's Lament:

* Sorrow, depression, and loneliness/solitude

Literary terms The Dream of the Rood:

* Contains alliteration throughout the verse,

example: “brightest of beams” and “garnished with gold” 

Literary terms The Wanderer:

* Contains kennings for example: 

Lines 46-49: When the exile awakens from his dream of being back in the mead-hall he sees "sea-birds bathing, wings spreading"

Literary terms The Wife's Lament: 

* Contains enjambment, caesura, and imagery

Ex: 

variation

the repeating of a single idea in different words, with each repetition adding a new level of meaning.

heaven-kingdom's Guardian    holy Creator

the measurer                                   mankind's Guardian

Glory-father                                     Master almighty

eternal Lord

Caedmon- Hymn of Creation

late 7th century (Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum)

illiterate Northumbrian cowherd

a dream

4 surviving manuscripts

• The Beowulf Manuscript
• the Exeter Book
• the Junius Manuscript
• Vercelli Book

There are also a few historical poems in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

Exeter Book: riddles

In the Exeter Book there are some riddles or enigmata. They use double-entendre, whereby one answer is suggested but another is meant.

A curiosity hangs by the thigh of a man, under its master's cloak.

It is pierced through in the front; it is stiff and hard and it has a good standing-place.

When the man pulls up his own robe above the knee, he means to poke the head of his hanging thing that familiar hole of matching length which he has often filled before.

religious verse

• the Dream of the Rood &  The Wanderer
• the cross (personification)

the Dream of the Rood

Listen to the explanation and features of the poem (next slides), then answer the questions.

Where was this Old English poem/fragment found?

What do we know about the author of the poem?

the Wanderer

• comitatus tradition (relationship lord and followers )
• honour
• christianity
• elegy: poem that laments the loss of worldly goods, glory, or human companionship

now read the poem in the reader and answer the questions

The Wife's Lament: