Abstract
Scholarship on The Wanderer has struggled to reconcile the Christian resolution of the poem with the speaker’s lingering dependence on Germanic-heroic cultural structures. The problem with the argument that heroic identity somehow persists for the speaker is, I suggest, that identity is always correlative to a cultural world. A “worldless” subject is a post-medieval, Cartesian innovation. The final lines of The Wanderer signal, in fact, that the speaker yearns for a new foundation for the self. With the loss of heroic culture, therefore, heroic identity loses its essential correlate. The crisis posed by the text is that the speaker experiences exile not only from a homeland, but also from the cultural framework that allowed his identity to cohere meaningfully. Nevertheless, the argument can be made that the poet seeks to preserve heroic values, and thereby salvage heroic identity. These values are deployed, however, with a new purpose: to confront resolutely the loss of the old cultural milieu. Heroic identity, therefore, finds an alternative correlate: not the immediate plenitude of a quasi-mythical heroic past, but a contemporary cultural modality mediated by its loss. The violence of an ideological and cultural transition is thus mitigated. I conclude by demonstrating how this reading situates The Wanderer precisely within the space of Anglo-Saxon literary production.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beaston, L. (2005). The Wanderer’s courage. Neophilologus, 89, 119–137.
Bjork, R. E. (1989). Sundor æt Rune: The voluntary exile of The Wanderer. Neophilologus, 73, 119–129.
Bredehoft, T. A. (2009). Authors, audiences, and Old English verse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bullough, D. A. (1993). What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne? Anglo-Saxon England, 22, 93–125.
Cavill, P. (1999). Maxims in Old English poetry. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Clark, S. L., & Wasserman, J. N. (1979). The imagery of The Wanderer. Neophilologus, 63, 291–296.
Cook, P. (1996). Woriað þa winsalo: The bonds of exile in The Wanderer. Neophilologus, 80, 127–137.
Cross, J. E. (1961). On the genre of The Wanderer. Neophilologus, 45, 63–72.
Derrida, J. (1981). Dissemination. (B. Johnson, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Diekstra, F. N. M. (1971). The Wanderer 65b–72: The passions of the mind and the cardinal virtues. Neophilologus, 55, 73–88.
Donahue, C. (1965). Beowulf and Christian tradition: A reconsideration from a Celtic stance. Traditio, 21, 55–116.
Dümmler, E. (Ed.). (1895). Alcuini Epistolae. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Aevi Karolini 4.2. Berlin: Weidmann.
Dunning, T. P., & Bliss, A. J. (Eds.). (1969). The Wanderer. London: Methuen.
Fowler, R. (1967). A theme in The Wanderer. Medium Ævum, 36, 1–14.
Fulk, R. D., Bjork, R. E., & Niles, J. D. (Eds.). (2008). Klaeber’s Beowulf (4th ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Greenfield, S. B. (1951). The Wanderer: A reconsideration of theme and structure. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 50, 451–465.
Griffith, M. S. (1996). Does wyrd bið ful aræd mean ‘Fate is wholly inexorable’? In M. J. Toswell & E. M. Tyler (Eds.), Studies in English language and literature: ‘Doubt wisely’. Papers in honour of E.G. Stanley (pp. 133–156). New York: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1987). The philosophical discourse of modernity: Twelve lectures. (F. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Halbrooks, J. (2003). Byrhtnoth’s great-hearted mirth, or praise and blame in The Battle of Maldon. Philological Quarterly, 82, 235–255.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). The phenomenology of spirit. (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hill, T. D. (2004). The unchanging hero: A stoic maxim in The Wanderer and its contexts. Studies in Philology, 101, 233–249.
Horgan, A. D. (1987). The Wanderer: A Boethian poem? Review of English Studies, 38, 40–46.
Langeslag, P. S. (2008). Boethian similitude in Deor and The Wanderer. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 109, 205–222.
Lindahl, C. (1996). Beowulf, old law, internalized feud. Southern Folklore, 53, 171–191.
Liuzza, R. M. (2003). The tower of Babel: The Wanderer and the ruins of history. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 36, 1–35.
Lumiansky, R. M. (1950). The dramatic structure of the Old English Wanderer. Neophilologus, 34, 104–112.
Magennis, H. (1986). Some images of sitting in Old English poetry. Neophilologus, 70, 442–452.
Near, M. R. (1993). Anticipating alienation: Beowulf and the intrusion of literacy. PMLA, 108, 320–332.
O’Keeffe, K. O’B. (1981). Beowulf, lines 702b–836: Transformations and the limits of the human. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 23, 484–494.
O’Keeffe, K. O’B. (1990). Visible song: Transitional literacy in Old English verse. Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ong, W. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Orchard, A. (2002). Re-Reading The Wanderer: The value of cross-references. In T. N. Hall (Ed.), Via Crucis: Essays on early medieval sources and ideas in memory of J.E. Cross (pp. 1–26). Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
Orchard, A. (2003). A critical companion to Beowulf. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
Pasternack, C. B. (1995). The textuality of Old English poetry. Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England 13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pope, J. C. (1974). Second thoughts on the interpretation of The Seafarer. Anglo-Saxon England, 3, 75–86.
Scragg, D. (Ed.). (1981). The Battle of Maldon. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sharma, M. (2005). Metalepsis and monstrosity: The narrative boundaries of Beowulf. Studies in Philology, 102, 247–279.
Shippey, T. A. (1994). The Wanderer and The Seafarer as wisdom poetry. In H. Aertsen & R. H. Bremmer Jr. (Eds.), Companion to Old English poetry (pp. 145–157). Amsterdam: VU University Press.
Swanton, M. (Ed.). (1970). The Dream of the Rood. Manchester Old and Middle English texts. New York: Barnes (for Manchester University Press).
Tanke, J. (2002). Beowulf, gold-luck, and God’s will. Studies in Philology, 99, 56–79.
Trilling, R. R. (2009). The aesthetics of nostalgia: Historical representation in Old English verse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sharma, M. Heroic Subject and Cultural Substance in The Wanderer . Neophilologus 96, 611–629 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-011-9278-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-011-9278-9