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Explore the enigmatic poem "The Seafarer" from the Exeter Book. Dive into its themes of hardship, fate, and faith, blending Anglo-Saxon beliefs with Christian reflections. Unveil the contrasting images of land and sea, safety and struggle, in a soliloquy that echoes a wraecca's harrowing journey, exiled from community. Experience the power of caesuras, alliterations, and kennings as they weave a tapestry of emotions and reflections in this timeless literary treasure.
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The Seafarer Translated by Burton Raffel Composed by an unknown poet
Part of The Exeter Book The Exeter Book was given to Exeter Cathedral in the 11th century. It contained a collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts • Can be considered an elegy, or mournful, contemplative poem. • Can also be considered a planctus, or “complaint.” This would involve a fictional speaker and a subject that may be loss other than death. • Regardless, the expression of strong emotion is the key.
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts cont. • What the poem has that most Anglo-Saxon poems also have: • Caesuras – pause in a line • Alliteration joins the 2 parts of the line • Kennings – metaphorical phrases
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts • Caesura and alliteration in action “The only sound / was the roaring sea” • Kennings “coldest seeds” = hail “givers of gold” = Anglo-Saxon kings
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts • A wraecca tells his tale; he is at sea. (A “wraecca” was a person who had been exiled from his community.) • Poem highlights the balance between the Anglo-Saxon belief in fate, where everything is grim and overpowering, and the Christian believer’s reliance on God.
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts • The land represents safety and security. • The sea represents hardship and struggle, but the man is drawn to it because it brings him closer to God. The sea represents the power of God. • “Home” represents heaven or being closer to God.
The Seafarer – the cold, hard facts • The following lines you’ll want to be able to define. • “Nothing Golden shakes the Wrath of God.” • “Sweated in the cold of an anxious watch”
The Seafarer – literary criticism • Some believe that the poem has 2 speakers. One who makes a personal “complaint” and a second who comments on the condition described by the first. • The second speaker emphasizes man’s relationship with the divine rather than one man’s personal plight.
The Seafarer – literary criticism • However, Michael Alexander, a literary critic, believes it is not a dialogue. “The poem is a soliloquy: a wraecca that tells of the many winters [he] spent at sea, and the hardship he has borne.”
The Seafarer – literary criticism • Rosemary Woolf believes the following: “”…the man who lives a life on land is always in a state of security and contentment: he is therefore mindless of the Christian image of man as an exile; …The sea, however, is always a place of isolation and hardship: the man, therefore, who chooses to be literally what in Christian terms he is figuratively, must forsake the land and live upon the sea.”
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.
