Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 327 views

    The Seafarer

    Uploaded by

    Danish Suleman
    The document provides an overview and analysis of the Old English poem "The Seafarer". It discusses that the poem is found in the Exeter Book, an anthology from the late 10th century. The poem is about a sailor who laments the hardships of life at sea and suffering, but also acknowledges that those on land cannot understand. It offers both analysis of the poem's themes and language elements like alliteration and kennings.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Seafarer

    Uploaded by

    Danish Suleman
    327 views18 pages
    The document provides an overview and analysis of the Old English poem "The Seafarer". It discusses that the poem is found in the Exeter Book, an anthology from the late 10th century. The poem is about a sailor who laments the hardships of life at sea and suffering, but also acknowledges that those on land cannot understand. It offers both analysis of the poem's themes and language elements like alliteration and kennings.

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document provides an overview and analysis of the Old English poem "The Seafarer". It discusses that the poem is found in the Exeter Book, an anthology from the late 10th century. The poem is about a sailor who laments the hardships of life at sea and suffering, but also acknowledges that those on land cannot understand. It offers both analysis of the poem's themes and language elements like alliteration and kennings.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    327 views18 pages

    The Seafarer

    Uploaded by

    Danish Suleman
    The document provides an overview and analysis of the Old English poem "The Seafarer". It discusses that the poem is found in the Exeter Book, an anthology from the late 10th century. The poem is about a sailor who laments the hardships of life at sea and suffering, but also acknowledges that those on land cannot understand. It offers both analysis of the poem's themes and language elements like alliteration and kennings.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 18

    The

    Seafarer
    LIT205: SURVEY OF ENGLISH
    LITERATURE I

    WEEK 3
    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
    ▪ The uniqueSeafarer”
    copy of “The Seafarer” is found in the
    Exeter Book, a manuscript anthology of Old English
    poetry assembled about 975 c.e., although many of the
    poems, including “The Seafarer,” may have circulated in
    oral versions before being written down in the form in
    which they now exist. The poem’s Christian message
    would seem to rule out any date earlier than the
    seventh century, when the Anglo-Saxons were
    converted; at the other extreme, it may have been
    composed, at least in the form in which it survives,
    around the time that the scribe copied it into the book in
    the second half of the tenth century. The 124-line poem
    is untitled in the manuscript, and its author is unknown.
    Summar
    y ▪ This is a story of a sailor’s life on sea and the many
    hardships that he endures in his life as a seafarer.
    He laments that no one on land can understand his
    suffering. On the sea, he says, there is no “protector for
    men.” Those on land, “flushed with wine”, are
    incapable of believing in his suffering. Even though he
    envies the peacefulness of a life on land, he sets out
    on another voyage.
    ▪ In the end he offers a prayer to God “Let us ponder
    where we have our homes…that we should strive to
    get there. Let there be thanks to God.” lines 116-120
    The Seafarer – the cold, hard
    facts: Figurative Language
    ▪ Can be considered an elegy, or mournful,
    contemplative poem.
    ▪ Some consider a lament because of the narrator’s
    suffering
    ▪ Some consider it an allegory because it is seen as a
    story of Adam and his descendants cast out of the
    Garden of Eden and Christian pilgrims in voluntary
    exile journeying to The City of God.
    ▪ Regardless, the expression of strong emotion is the
    key.
    The Seafarer – the cold, hard
    facts –figurative language

    ▪ What the poem has that most Anglo-


    Saxon poems also have:
    1. Caesuras – pause in a line
    2. “Night would blacken: it would snow
    from the north; Frost bound the earth ad
    hail would fall, The coldest seeds.”
    Lines 31-33
    The Seafarer’s Figurative
    Language
    1. Alliteration uses repetitive sounds at the
    beginning of the word. “This tale is true
    and mine.” Line 1
    2. Kennings – metaphorical phrases
    ▪ “Praise the Holy Grace of Him who
    honored us, Eternal, unchanging
    creator of earth.” Words for God.
    Lines 122-125
    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.)
    ▪ One who is considered a wanderer from foreign
    lands

    ▪ 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 – literary
    analysis
    In Julienne H. Empric's article on the "experience of
    displacement”,"The Seafarer" focuses on how the
    poem moves from the particular to the general, from
    the known to the unknown, and from the temporal to
    the eternal. The Seafarer speaks of the land-dwellers in
    contrast to himself, and by doing so demonstrates that
    he is wiser and more experienced in dealing with
    hardship.
    The Seafarer – literary
    analysis
    ▪ Michael Alexander, a literary critic,
    believes it is a single speaker.

    “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
    analysis
    ▪ Renowned literary scholar Stanley Greenfield
    characterizes the Seafarer's attitude towards his
    imminent journey as one of "hesitancy and trepidation,"
    describing it as "a resurrection of the anguish which
    the seafarer suffered in the past intensified now by the
    thought of a new and more irrevocable exile from
    earthly felicity." The shift in the poet's tone actually
    adds more complexity to the narrator, who isn't quite
    convinced yet about "the ascetic life."
    The Seafarer – literary
    analysis
    ▪ 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.
    Works Cited
    ▪ Bosworth, Joseph. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Ed. Thomas
    Northcote Toller and Others. Comp. Sean Christ and Ondřej Tichý.
    Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, 21 Mar. 2010. Web. 5 Nov.
    2013.
    ▪ GradeSaver, 20 August 2015. Web. 20 August 2015.
    ▪ Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Seafarer Poem Text." Shmoop.com.
    Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 20 Aug. 2015.

    You might also like