Old English

Week 24: Concord

Please read and study: §187; vocabulary groups 141-147 (Word-Hoard).

Please prepare: Riddles, (k); “The Wanderer”, 1-57.

“The Wanderer” is one of the handful of examples of what has come to be known as Old English elegy. The name “elegy” is not strictly consistent with classical use of the term, and certainly this is not written in anything like the ancient Greek and Latin elegiac meter, but there is a commonality of tone, which caused the writers of the late eighteenth century (people like Thomas Gray, famous for his “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”, and also an antiquarian of sorts) to link the one with the other. In its own terms, “The Wanderer” is a remarkable poem, filled with strangely disembodied imagery and an almost modernist sensibility, while still retaining the visceral connection to the misty world of the North Sea wanderer of the millennium.

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