ESC: English Studies in Canada

T H E O L D E N G L IS H E L E G Y AS A G E N R E ANNE L. KXINCK -Lhe word “elegy” has a variety of applications, among which its use in an Old English context appears to be rather idiosyncratic. Everybody knows what the major Old English elegies are, but it often seems rather strange that we should be calling them “elegies.” 1 I would like to consider a par­ ticular aspect of this problem: that is, the question of whether the Old English elegies possess elegiac form, as I believe they do. I intend “elegiac form” to be understood in a specifically Old English context, but with reference to a broader notion encompassing both reflective and lyrical elements. Nineteenth-century scholars began applying the term “elegy” to a group of fairly short Old English poems in the Exeter Book: The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Riming Poem, Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s La­ ment, Resignation, The Husband’s Message, and The Ruin, and to certain passages from longer works, especially the Lament of the Last Survivor and the Father’s Lament in Beowulf (lines 2247-66 and 2444-62a, respectively), and the close of Guthlac (lines 1348-79).2 Although these poems and pas­ sages have been grouped together in this way, there are distinct sub­ categories among them. The Wanderer and The Seafarer, like the lesser known Riming Poem and Resignation, have close affinities with homiletic literature,3 and Deor with heroic legend, while Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s Lament, and The Husband’s Message are love poems,4 The Ruin is a purely descriptive piece, and the passages from Beowulf and Guthlac are coloured by their respective narrative contexts. The use of the term “elegy” as applied to these various works is also in some respects misleading because they are not elegies in the classical sense of compositions in elegiac metre (eAeyeix) nor in the tradition of later English pastoral elegy. The basic notion of a lament (eAeyos)5 is more or less applicable to all of them, with the significant exception of The Hus­ band’s Message, where unhappiness is a thing of the past. Though the poems have little in common with the later pastoral elegies in English, modelled on the eclogue and the idyll (e.g., Milton’s Lycidas, Shelley’s Adonais, Arnold’s E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x , 2, June 1984 Thyrsis), they have a kinship with Gray’s Elegy, which treats themes of death and transience in a general way, and even with Tennyson’s In Memoriam, which, though far longer than the Old English poems, resembles them in consisting of rather various reflecdons prompted by the need to come to terms with a sense of loss. On this basis, then, it is appropriate to call the Old English pieces “elegies.” Some people have suggested specific classical models. In particular, Helga Reuschel, in a 1938 article, “Ovid und die angelsächsischen Elegien,”6 argued that Ovid’s Heroldes, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto formed the inspiration for some of the Old English poems, but the resemblances are anything but conclusive and her theory has never been widely adopted. Certainly, there is a widespread feeling that the Old English pieces desig­ nated by the term “elegy” belong together. Even though no Old English tradition of elegy exists as a genre on classical models,7 there clearly exists a tradition with its own themes and motifs: exile, loss of loved ones, scenes of desolation, etc.8 I believe that the term “elegy” has a further justifica­ tion; it can be shown that, in addition to its characteristic themes, Old English elegy also has a characteristic form. This form, which is visible in the complete poems rather than in the passages from longer works, manifests itself in a use of some of the following devices: monologue, conventional introduction of the speaker, gnomic conclusion, repetition of key phrases, repetition of entire lines, and, occasionally, rhyme. These features are not exclusive to the elegies, nor are all of them dis­ played...