Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

Very little that we would regard as lyric poetry has been preserved from the Old English period, though it is inconceivable that songs did not exist. Some of the poetry that comes closest to lyric is found in the group of poems that modern scholars have called the “elegies.” These are fairly short reflective pieces that treat themes of loss, absence, and transience, usually in the male voice and with reference to the communal life of a warrior society. But two of the poems in this group are spoken by women; what these speakers miss is not the comitatus, the band of warriors around a warlord, but the man they love. In these poems, the traditional language of Old English heroic poetry is adapted to a more personal situation. Very likely, too, these two poems, especially Wulf and Eadwacer, are influenced by the language and meter of other, more lyrical, kinds of poetry, now lost. It is not universally accepted that Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife’s Lament are love poems, although that is the usual interpretation.