where legends are made

Sam Mabry – The Exeter Book: An Insight Into the Hardships of Men and Women of Early English Society

  • June 8th, 2021

{Note on formatting: in MLA style, block quotes should be indented. For website readability, space between paragraphs in used in place of indenting.}

UNESCO, a non-profit organization founded in November of 1945, is committed to advancing peace among nations and groups through education and the natural sciences. One of the primary ways UNESCO achieves this goal is through the preservation and recognition of artifacts of considerable global cultural significance. Among this list of artifacts lies the Exeter Book, which was deemed important by UNESCO in 2016 (Flood). The Exeter Book is one of only four extant manuscripts of Old English writings and contains one-sixth of all the surviving corpus of Old English verse (Hosler 1). The Exeter Book contains nearly ninety riddles and eight elegies all dealing with emotional complexities or moral dilemmas. Additionally, these passages can provide substantially more information into early English society than other popular riddles and stories of the period. Some of Exeter’s elegies tackle complicated issues such as death, separation, and loss. These elegies have the potential to reveal how individuals of early English society dealt with these tragedies and the morals they upheld. The most notable out of the eight is “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament,” which both contain themes highlighting these issues. Through the literary examination of “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament,” readers can trace many of the narrators’ hardships to the morals, values, and struggles of men and women in old English civilization.

The Exeter Book’s history is vital to understanding how and to what extent the elegies apply to the individuals of the time. The book was given as a gift to the Exeter Cathedral by its first Bishop, Leofric, near the end of the tenth century. Leofric had served by the side of Edward the Confessor and once Edward became king, Leofric was made Bishop of Cornwall and Crediton. However, due to the small size of Crediton, Leofric moved the episcopal seat to Exeter in 1050 (Barlow 120). Leofric was an extensive collector of literature, amassing his works in the cathedral’s library. Leofric was known to have a staff of sixteen scribes, who would copy and transcribe his accumulated manuscripts (Terharne 159). Leofric was believed to have contributed nearly twelve manuscripts, all for his personal use as bishop (Treharne 160-161). The first record of the Exeter Books existence is in an inventory recorded around the year of his death, 1072. The inventory documents the lands Leofric restored and acquired, the treasures he bestowed, and the Latin texts he obtained (Gameson 136-137). The Exeter book remains the most important and influential out of Leofric’s gifts. Starting in 2017, The University of Exeter joined The Cathedral of Exeter in a project titled “The Exeter Book Project” with the shared aim of “curating our cultural heritage for today and the long-term future” (Univ. of Exeter). The team’s goal is to create a complete digital copy of the book which readers can view through high-resolution photographs. As of today, the project is still on going through the generous support of the University of Exeter’s Provost’s fund.

Before discussing “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”, it is important to understand the term elegy used when defining these poems. The term elegy has been used in a multitude of ways. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary recognizes elegies as elegiac couplets used for “poetry of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead” (Oxford). In regards to the Exeter Book however, elegy can be broadened to be “any serious meditative poem” dealing with issues of loneliness, longing, pain, and aging (Prescott 51). There is also no clear order in which the contents of the Exeter Book is organized. While “The Wanderer” and several other notable elegies are located near the beginning of the manuscript, “The Wife’s Lament” is separated from the other elegies by fifty-nine of the ninety riddles found in the book.

There are several other notable elegies in the Exeter Book such as: “The Seafarer” and “Wulf and Eadwacer”. “The Seafarer” describes a lonely sailor in sorrow, seeking pity for his wretched life on the high seas. “Wulf and Eadwacer” describes a woman longing for her lover, Wulf, who lives in exile due to being an outlaw. While both these stories do describe hardship and suffering, it is best to look at the elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament” in the context of the lives of men and women in early English society. “The Wanderer” describes the meditations and thoughts of a former warrior living in solitude. The warrior, known as Eardstapa, is deeply upset by the loss of his kin in war and is stuck on the brevity of life and the experiences of his past. “The Wife’s Lament” depicts a woman wallowing in isolation, due to her separation from her husband. However, in order to understand how these texts allude to common moral issues and values of early English men and women, close-reading and historical reference is required.

Early English warriors upheld many beliefs and practices while in service of their king, one of the most notable is Comitatus. Comitatus is most easily defined as the bond of loyalty and devotion between warriors and aids to their king (Steinberg 78). It is clear that Eardstapa upholds this belief through his reminiscence of his admiration to his king:

It seems in his heart that he holds and kisses
The lord of the troop and lays on his knee
His head and hands as he had before. (Wanderer, lines 43-45)

While this created strong fellowship amongst the king’s men, there was never a sense of patriotism or loyalty to a specific cause. This is an explanation for the frequent shifts of power present in early English history. These frequent shifts would result in constant turmoil and bloodshed through the occurring battles, pillages, and massacres (DiTucci 214). Consistent bloodshed and uncertainty would take a toll on these warriors. The old English belief that men had to be stoic and unemotional exacerbated their condition (Hill 236). Eardstapa shows resentment towards, but understands, the notion that he cannot openly express his sorrows:

At dawn alone I must
Mouth my cares; the man does not live
Whom I dare tell my depths
Straight out. I see truth
In the lordly custom for the courageous man. (Wanderer, lines 8-12)

Eardstapa’s overall despair is then only further worsened by the complicated old English belief in Wyrd. Scholars disagree on the exact interpretation of the term. Some believe Wyrd is to be interpreted as a “pre-Christian Germanic concept or goddess of fate.” Others disagree, denying any pagan significance in the use of Wyrd in various Old English literature, but believe that Wyrd was “a pagan deity in the pre-Christian period” (Frakes 15). In the poem, Eardstapa’s interpretation of Wyrd envisions the world doomed to an everlasting winter caused by the sins of man:

A blanket of frost binds the earth,
Winter is moaning! When the mists darken
And night descends, the north delivers
A fury of hail in hatred at men.
All is wretched in the realm of the earth;
The way of fate changes the world under heaven. (Wanderer, lines 104-109)

The belief in fate or personal destiny permeated early English culture. Due to the frequency of bloodshed and conflict, many warriors would naturally hold a shallow and brooding outlook on life and the fate of humanity. Men, especially warriors, of pre-Conquest England, faced innumerable hardships in terms of cultural norms, loyalty, and their interpretation of fate.

Similarly, “The Wife’s Lament” highlights the status of women in early English society. “The Wife’s Lament” depicts a woman who has been separated from her husband. It has been hypothesized that this woman is, in fact, a Peaceweaver or a Peacepledge. (Jamison 16) A Peace-Weaver is a woman who is married off to an enemy tribe or faction in the hope to bring about peace between the two groups. (Porter) In the elegy, the woman describes how the seemingly unbreakable bond between her, and her former husband has shattered:

Blite was our bearing often we vowed
that but death alone
would part us two naught else.
But this is turned round now…
as if it never were our friendship. (Lament, 21-25)

The woman feels as if she is no longer of any use to her tribe and has been cast away to a completely foreign land and forgotten:

The man sent me out to live in the woods
under an oak tree in this den in the earth.
Ancient this earth hall. I am all longing. (Lament, 27-29)

This poem illustrates the fact that women’s value in early English society was primarily objective, based on their utility in negotiation and nothing else. Naturally, this is extremely demoralizing and oppressive of women, highlighting how women too struggled with the social norms as did men.

While early English art and culture flourished during the last century of the first millennium, men and women faced oppressive societal norms and hardships every day. The two  addressed elegies from the Exeter Book highlight these struggles: “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”. “The Wanderer” exemplifies the hardships of an old English warrior: unable to express emotion, the lack of patriotism leading to constant bloodshed, and a bleak outlook on life. These all led to warriors, and men, struggling to maintain their emotional stability, but due to the preventative norm of expressing emotion, they were forced to hide their sentiments. Women faced, what some would consider, an even bleaker outlook on their lives. Most women were strictly judged on their utility. Whether that be in maintaining household duties or acting as a peaceweaver; they were rarely recognized as truly equal to men. Not only did peaceweavers suffer separation from their loved ones, but also had to endure the fact that they were being married to someone who may have a burning hatred for the ones they held dear. These two elegies share a common thread – the sorrow felt resulting from the loss of loved ones and the attempt to cope and rationalize the consequent isolation. Even after two-thousand years this thread is still relevant today, showing that the most basic of human emotions will never change as time progresses.

Anonymous. “The Wanderer.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Trans. R. M. Liuzza. 2nd ed. Peteborough: Broadview, 2011. 52-54. Print.

Anonymous. “The Wife’s Lament.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Trans. R. M. Liuzza. 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview, 2011. 56. Print.

Barlow, Frank (1983). The Norman Conquest and Beyond. London: Hambledon Press. pp. 120

DiTucci, David. Deadly Hostility: Feud, Violence, and Power in Early Anglo-Saxon England. Diss. Western Michigan U, 2017. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan U, 2017. pp. 214 Digital.

“Elegy”. OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.

Flood, A. (2016). Unesco lists Exeter Book among ‘world’s principal cultural artifacts’. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/22/unesco-lists-exeter-book-among-worlds-principal-cultural-artifacts

Frakes, Jerold C. “The Ancient Concept of Casus and Its Early Medieval Interpretations.” Vivarium. 22.1 (1984): 15. Print.

Gameson, Richard. “The Origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 25, 1996, pp. 136–137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44509637. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020.

Hill, Thomas D. “The Unchanging Hero: A Stoic Maxim in ‘The Wanderer’ and Its Contexts.” Studies in Philology, vol. 101, no. 3, 2004, pp. 236. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4174790. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.

Hosler, John Donald. Two Historical Riddles of the Old English Exeter Book. Diss. Iowa State, Ames: Iowa State U, 2001. 6. Digital

Jamison, Carol Parrish. “Traffic of Women in Germanic Literature: The Role of the Peace Pledge in Marital Exchanges.” Women in German Yearbook, vol. 20, 2004, pp. 14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20688971. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.

Porter, D. C. (2001). The Social Centrality of Women in Beowulf: A New Context. The Heroic Age, (5). Retrieved 2020, from https://www.heroicage.org/issues/5/porter1.html

Prescott, A., & Qualls, B. V. (Eds.). (2010). The Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Second ed.). Broadview Press. pp.51.

Steinberg, Sigfrid Henry. A New Dictionary of British History. New York: St. Martin’s, 1963. Print. pp. 78 “The Exeter Book Project.” Univ. of Exeter. Web. http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/research/digital/projects/exeter-book/11 Dec. 2020.

Treharne, Elaine M. “Producing a Library in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Exeter, 1050-1072.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 54, no. 214, 2003, pp. 160-161. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3661330. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.

Categories: Uncategorized

Sam Mabry – The Exeter Book: An Insight Into the Hardships of Men and Women of Early English Society

  • June 8th, 2021

{Note on formatting: in MLA style, block quotes should be indented. For website readability, space between paragraphs in used in place of indenting.}

UNESCO, a non-profit organization founded in November of 1945, is committed to advancing peace among nations and groups through education and the natural sciences. One of the primary ways UNESCO achieves this goal is through the preservation and recognition of artifacts of considerable global cultural significance. Among this list of artifacts lies the Exeter Book, which was deemed important by UNESCO in 2016 (Flood). The Exeter Book is one of only four extant manuscripts of Old English writings and contains one-sixth of all the surviving corpus of Old English verse (Hosler 1). The Exeter Book contains nearly ninety riddles and eight elegies all dealing with emotional complexities or moral dilemmas. Additionally, these passages can provide substantially more information into early English society than other popular riddles and stories of the period. Some of Exeter’s elegies tackle complicated issues such as death, separation, and loss. These elegies have the potential to reveal how individuals of early English society dealt with these tragedies and the morals they upheld. The most notable out of the eight is “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament,” which both contain themes highlighting these issues. Through the literary examination of “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament,” readers can trace many of the narrators’ hardships to the morals, values, and struggles of men and women in old English civilization.

The Exeter Book’s history is vital to understanding how and to what extent the elegies apply to the individuals of the time. The book was given as a gift to the Exeter Cathedral by its first Bishop, Leofric, near the end of the tenth century. Leofric had served by the side of Edward the Confessor and once Edward became king, Leofric was made Bishop of Cornwall and Crediton. However, due to the small size of Crediton, Leofric moved the episcopal seat to Exeter in 1050 (Barlow 120). Leofric was an extensive collector of literature, amassing his works in the cathedral’s library. Leofric was known to have a staff of sixteen scribes, who would copy and transcribe his accumulated manuscripts (Terharne 159). Leofric was believed to have contributed nearly twelve manuscripts, all for his personal use as bishop (Treharne 160-161). The first record of the Exeter Books existence is in an inventory recorded around the year of his death, 1072. The inventory documents the lands Leofric restored and acquired, the treasures he bestowed, and the Latin texts he obtained (Gameson 136-137). The Exeter book remains the most important and influential out of Leofric’s gifts. Starting in 2017, The University of Exeter joined The Cathedral of Exeter in a project titled “The Exeter Book Project” with the shared aim of “curating our cultural heritage for today and the long-term future” (Univ. of Exeter). The team’s goal is to create a complete digital copy of the book which readers can view through high-resolution photographs. As of today, the project is still on going through the generous support of the University of Exeter’s Provost’s fund.

Before discussing “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”, it is important to understand the term elegy used when defining these poems. The term elegy has been used in a multitude of ways. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary recognizes elegies as elegiac couplets used for “poetry of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead” (Oxford). In regards to the Exeter Book however, elegy can be broadened to be “any serious meditative poem” dealing with issues of loneliness, longing, pain, and aging (Prescott 51). There is also no clear order in which the contents of the Exeter Book is organized. While “The Wanderer” and several other notable elegies are located near the beginning of the manuscript, “The Wife’s Lament” is separated from the other elegies by fifty-nine of the ninety riddles found in the book.

There are several other notable elegies in the Exeter Book such as: “The Seafarer” and “Wulf and Eadwacer”. “The Seafarer” describes a lonely sailor in sorrow, seeking pity for his wretched life on the high seas. “Wulf and Eadwacer” describes a woman longing for her lover, Wulf, who lives in exile due to being an outlaw. While both these stories do describe hardship and suffering, it is best to look at the elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament” in the context of the lives of men and women in early English society. “The Wanderer” describes the meditations and thoughts of a former warrior living in solitude. The warrior, known as Eardstapa, is deeply upset by the loss of his kin in war and is stuck on the brevity of life and the experiences of his past. “The Wife’s Lament” depicts a woman wallowing in isolation, due to her separation from her husband. However, in order to understand how these texts allude to common moral issues and values of early English men and women, close-reading and historical reference is required.

Early English warriors upheld many beliefs and practices while in service of their king, one of the most notable is Comitatus. Comitatus is most easily defined as the bond of loyalty and devotion between warriors and aids to their king (Steinberg 78). It is clear that Eardstapa upholds this belief through his reminiscence of his admiration to his king:

It seems in his heart that he holds and kisses
The lord of the troop and lays on his knee
His head and hands as he had before. (Wanderer, lines 43-45)

While this created strong fellowship amongst the king’s men, there was never a sense of patriotism or loyalty to a specific cause. This is an explanation for the frequent shifts of power present in early English history. These frequent shifts would result in constant turmoil and bloodshed through the occurring battles, pillages, and massacres (DiTucci 214). Consistent bloodshed and uncertainty would take a toll on these warriors. The old English belief that men had to be stoic and unemotional exacerbated their condition (Hill 236). Eardstapa shows resentment towards, but understands, the notion that he cannot openly express his sorrows:

At dawn alone I must
Mouth my cares; the man does not live
Whom I dare tell my depths
Straight out. I see truth
In the lordly custom for the courageous man. (Wanderer, lines 8-12)

Eardstapa’s overall despair is then only further worsened by the complicated old English belief in Wyrd. Scholars disagree on the exact interpretation of the term. Some believe Wyrd is to be interpreted as a “pre-Christian Germanic concept or goddess of fate.” Others disagree, denying any pagan significance in the use of Wyrd in various Old English literature, but believe that Wyrd was “a pagan deity in the pre-Christian period” (Frakes 15). In the poem, Eardstapa’s interpretation of Wyrd envisions the world doomed to an everlasting winter caused by the sins of man:

A blanket of frost binds the earth,
Winter is moaning! When the mists darken
And night descends, the north delivers
A fury of hail in hatred at men.
All is wretched in the realm of the earth;
The way of fate changes the world under heaven. (Wanderer, lines 104-109)

The belief in fate or personal destiny permeated early English culture. Due to the frequency of bloodshed and conflict, many warriors would naturally hold a shallow and brooding outlook on life and the fate of humanity. Men, especially warriors, of pre-Conquest England, faced innumerable hardships in terms of cultural norms, loyalty, and their interpretation of fate.

Similarly, “The Wife’s Lament” highlights the status of women in early English society. “The Wife’s Lament” depicts a woman who has been separated from her husband. It has been hypothesized that this woman is, in fact, a Peaceweaver or a Peacepledge. (Jamison 16) A Peace-Weaver is a woman who is married off to an enemy tribe or faction in the hope to bring about peace between the two groups. (Porter) In the elegy, the woman describes how the seemingly unbreakable bond between her, and her former husband has shattered:

Blite was our bearing often we vowed
that but death alone
would part us two naught else.
But this is turned round now…
as if it never were our friendship. (Lament, 21-25)

The woman feels as if she is no longer of any use to her tribe and has been cast away to a completely foreign land and forgotten:

The man sent me out to live in the woods
under an oak tree in this den in the earth.
Ancient this earth hall. I am all longing. (Lament, 27-29)

This poem illustrates the fact that women’s value in early English society was primarily objective, based on their utility in negotiation and nothing else. Naturally, this is extremely demoralizing and oppressive of women, highlighting how women too struggled with the social norms as did men.

While early English art and culture flourished during the last century of the first millennium, men and women faced oppressive societal norms and hardships every day. The two  addressed elegies from the Exeter Book highlight these struggles: “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”. “The Wanderer” exemplifies the hardships of an old English warrior: unable to express emotion, the lack of patriotism leading to constant bloodshed, and a bleak outlook on life. These all led to warriors, and men, struggling to maintain their emotional stability, but due to the preventative norm of expressing emotion, they were forced to hide their sentiments. Women faced, what some would consider, an even bleaker outlook on their lives. Most women were strictly judged on their utility. Whether that be in maintaining household duties or acting as a peaceweaver; they were rarely recognized as truly equal to men. Not only did peaceweavers suffer separation from their loved ones, but also had to endure the fact that they were being married to someone who may have a burning hatred for the ones they held dear. These two elegies share a common thread – the sorrow felt resulting from the loss of loved ones and the attempt to cope and rationalize the consequent isolation. Even after two-thousand years this thread is still relevant today, showing that the most basic of human emotions will never change as time progresses.

Anonymous. “The Wanderer.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Trans. R. M. Liuzza. 2nd ed. Peteborough: Broadview, 2011. 52-54. Print.

Anonymous. “The Wife’s Lament.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Trans. R. M. Liuzza. 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview, 2011. 56. Print.

Barlow, Frank (1983). The Norman Conquest and Beyond. London: Hambledon Press. pp. 120

DiTucci, David. Deadly Hostility: Feud, Violence, and Power in Early Anglo-Saxon England. Diss. Western Michigan U, 2017. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan U, 2017. pp. 214 Digital.

“Elegy”. OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.

Flood, A. (2016). Unesco lists Exeter Book among ‘world’s principal cultural artifacts’. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/22/unesco-lists-exeter-book-among-worlds-principal-cultural-artifacts

Frakes, Jerold C. “The Ancient Concept of Casus and Its Early Medieval Interpretations.” Vivarium. 22.1 (1984): 15. Print.

Gameson, Richard. “The Origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 25, 1996, pp. 136–137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44509637. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020.

Hill, Thomas D. “The Unchanging Hero: A Stoic Maxim in ‘The Wanderer’ and Its Contexts.” Studies in Philology, vol. 101, no. 3, 2004, pp. 236. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4174790. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.

Hosler, John Donald. Two Historical Riddles of the Old English Exeter Book. Diss. Iowa State, Ames: Iowa State U, 2001. 6. Digital

Jamison, Carol Parrish. “Traffic of Women in Germanic Literature: The Role of the Peace Pledge in Marital Exchanges.” Women in German Yearbook, vol. 20, 2004, pp. 14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20688971. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.

Porter, D. C. (2001). The Social Centrality of Women in Beowulf: A New Context. The Heroic Age, (5). Retrieved 2020, from https://www.heroicage.org/issues/5/porter1.html

Prescott, A., & Qualls, B. V. (Eds.). (2010). The Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Second ed.). Broadview Press. pp.51.

Steinberg, Sigfrid Henry. A New Dictionary of British History. New York: St. Martin’s, 1963. Print. pp. 78 “The Exeter Book Project.” Univ. of Exeter. Web. http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/research/digital/projects/exeter-book/11 Dec. 2020.

Treharne, Elaine M. “Producing a Library in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Exeter, 1050-1072.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 54, no. 214, 2003, pp. 160-161. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3661330. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.