John D. Niles

The Problem of the Ending of the Wife's "Lament"

The poem known as The Wifes Lament has long been admired as one of the most evocative poems of Old English literature. It is also regarded as one of the most problematic.1 Here I wish to address one noteworthy problem associated with that poem: namely, how to construe a passage of ten and a half lines at the poems close (lines 42-52a), whether as the speakers gnomic reflection on the sorrows of life or as her outright curse upon a man who has wronged her. Upon that point the interpretation of the narrative and its emotional arc chiefly depends. Resolving that issue in a manner that will win the assent of informed readers will require first of all a careful look at the exact phrasing of the text. As we shall see, however, philology alone cannot resolve the problem of how to construe either this particular passage or the poem as a whole. It can only open up certain her meneutic possibilities while virtually ruling out certain others. I therefore hope to develop a viable reading context for The Wifes Lament by directing attention to cursing as a social institution and a literary theme, both in the earlier Middle Ages in Europe and, as space permits, in other times and places. That part of the paper may be of interest to medievalists in its own right. By combining the methods of philology and historical anthropology, I hope to present an interpretation of The Wifes Lament that is both linguistically sound and historically plausible, even if it departs from a consensus of current critical opinion in its emphasis on the will to avenge as opposed to the virtue of stoic endurance. In passing, I will touch on

Understanding Beowulf: Oral Poetry Acts

How and why was Beowulf written down ? The A. presents a new theory of the making of this material text based on the concept of the « oral poetry act », a staged event that aims to generate a readable text of an oral poem for the benefit of a textual community. The theory, if valid, has implications for understanding the nature of Beowulf as a long, fully developed poem, as well as for editing archaic texts of this kind.

Exeter Book Riddle 74 and the play of the text

Riddle 74 is one of a handful of Old English riddles of the Exeter Book that have stubbornly resisted a solution. As Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson remark, ‘scholars have suggested answers…but none satisfies all the conditions set forth in the poem’. Peter Clemoes finds the attributes that are ascribed to this particular riddle-subject to be ‘so paradoxical that it seems impossible to name their possessor at all’. Riddles normally do have answers, however, and this one is no exception. My first aim in this article is to offer an answer to Riddle 74 that will put debate to rest as to its intended solution.

The trick of the runes in The Husband's Message

The Old English poem known as The Husbands Message begins in the same minimalist style as is typical of a number of poems of the Exeter Book (Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501). A first-person speaker, an ‘I’, begins speaking without any context for speech yet being established, without any self-introduction, and without as yet any known purpose: Nu ic onsundran þe secgan wille … As with the Exeter Book elegies known as The Seafarer, The Wifes Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, just as with all fifty Exeter Book riddles that are put into the first person singular voice, there is an implied challenge for the reader to discover who the speaker is and to fill out his or her full story. The poem thus begins with a small enigma. It is easy to tell that we are in the midst of that part of the Exeter Book that consists of close to one hundred riddles interspersed by a small miscellany of other poems, several of which are riddle-like in their resistance to easy interpretation.

Patterning in the wanderings of Odysseus

Almost as soon as Odysseus sets sail from the terra firma of Troy in the direction of Ithaka, once the sacred citadel has been burnt to ashes, he seems to enter a Never-Never land of giants, monsters, witches, demigods and demigoddesses, strange beasts, fabulous kingdoms, and the dead. One adventure follows on the heels of another in a sequence as bewildering as any which ever occurred in the murky woods of Arthurian legend. Odysseus travels south, north, east, and west to the limits of the known earth. He spends seven years languishing on the island of Ogygia ‘at the navel of the ocean’ (1.50). At different moments he is threatened with tempest, armed attack, cannibalism, dismemberment, sorcery, and several sorts of seduction. He captures magnificent booty, receives fabulous gifts, enjoys the love of two goddesses, and is offered the hand of a kings daughter in marriage — and by the time that he finally arrives on the shore of Ithaka and sets out to reclaim his kingdom, he is utterly alone, bereft of all companions, his appearance that of a ragged beggar.

Bede's Cædmon, “The Man Who Had No Story” (Irish Tale-Type 2412B)

Although various analogues have been cited to Bedes account of the poet Cædmon, none are very close. The plot of a tale well known in modern Irish and Scottish tradition, however, “The Man Who Had No Story” (Irish type 2412B), resembles the first part of Bedes chapter so closely as to suggest that Bede shaped his account under the influence of this narrative pattern, which must, therefore, be assumed to be of some antiquity. Clinching this connection is the motif that Cædmon, a lowly cowherd, is called by name by his mysterious interlocutor. Naturally, Bede turned this tale-type to his own purposes by emphasising devotional features that are not a normal part of the tale. Moreover, he added the story of Cædmons later life and pious death. Bedes monastic milieu was not impervious to oral culture, it seems. His account of Cædmon involves much myth-making, and it is best read as an example of the storytellers art.

Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition@@@The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research

This collection of new and (with one exception) previously unpublished essays is the first book-length compilation of scholarship and criticism devoted exclusively to these poems in many years. The essays re-examine many of the philological and thematic problems of the elegies, and they offer provocative solutions to some of the controversial questions of the genre.