1. Translated by Charles W. Kennedy
The Wanderer
Translated by Charles W. Kennedy

2. The Wanderer
This work is considered the most nearly perfect in form and feeling of all the surviving Old English poems.

3. The Wanderer
Dates back to 700 AD when Scandinavia was in upheaval. Immigrants used songs and poems to keep their homelands “alive.”

4. Exile = separation from one’s home or native country
For an Anglo-Saxon warrior this meant losing his Lord and his mead hall.

5. a word meaning “wretch, stranger, unhappy man, and wanderer”
Wraecca
a word meaning “wretch, stranger, unhappy man, and wanderer”

6. Literary Terms you need to know
Stoicism
Tone
Litotes
Motif

7. Stoicism
a state where a human does not show or feel any emotion – completely indifferent, not just hiding feelings

8. Tone
the attitude of a literary work toward its subject and the audience (formal vs. informal, humorous vs. serious)

9. Litotes
a characteristic figure of speech in Old English poetry – a form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite (think double negative) (ie. She was not unkind = She was kind)

10. Motif
a recurring literary element that serves as the basis for expanding the narrative (music – When it is heard, the couple falls in love.)

11. First motif found in The Wanderer
Ubi sunt que ante nos fuerunt? (Latin for – Where are they who before us went?)
Lines 90 – 94
They are nostalgic or seeking the past.

12. Second motif found in The Wanderer
Mutability = the inevitability of change. Things are going to change.
This is at odds with the concept of nostalgia. As a result, this poem has 2 conflicting motifs in action.

13. The Wanderer in a nutshell
A stoic wraecca is at sea remembering the mead hall and his lost life.

14. Reading Poetry – in general
Don’t stop at the end of a line, stop at the punctuation mark. The end of the line has to do with the “beat” of the line; it has nothing to do with the “meaning” of the line. Reading to the punctuation mark is called enjambment.