Identifying the Narrator of Wulf and Eadwacer? Signy, the Heroides and the Adaptation of Classical Models in Old English Literature

Sebo, Erin

doi:10.1007/s11061-020-09653-7

Neophilologus

2020

DOI: 10.1007/s11061-020-09653-7

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Identifying the Narrator of Wulf and Eadwacer? Signy, the Heroides and the Adaptation of Classical Models in Old English Literature

Erin Sebo

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…Gollancz (1902), responding toLawrence (1902) and Schofield (1902). Schofield's idea has been resurrected inNorth (1994),Hough (1995), Rozano-García (2021), andSebo (2021). 5 SeeMacGeorge (2002: 104-106).…”

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confidence: 99%

Wulf and EadwacerReloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer

Shiels

2022

Anglia

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This study re-examines the idea that Eadwacer in the short Old English ‘Elegy’ Wulf and Eadwacer is a literary representation of the historical Odoacer, a fifth-century Germanic king of Italy, and Wulf is his historical and traditional literary opponent, Theoderic the Ostrogoth. The text of the poem is compared for the first time with the historical records of the contention between Odoacer and Theoderic, and particularly of the siege of Ravenna (490–493). A new and revealing analogue is identified in a seventh-century chronicle of this event by John of Antioch, which introduces Odoacer’s wife as a woman who is starved to death, mirroring a puzzling detail in the poem. It is argued that the historical record (itself featuring literary influence) explains the characters and scenario of Wulf and Eadwacer, which can thus be re-interpreted as a linguistically highly adept and bitter lyric spoken by Eadwacer’s wife, lamenting her marriage to him and longing for her outlaw love, Wulf, set in the landscape of northern Italy. It is argued that it is a unique example of a poem in the (possibly Continental-derived) Anglo-Saxon Theoderic tradition, which was otherwise lost save for a few brief allusions in other poems. It is also suggested that the importance of its speaker and her feminine viewpoint ought to be incorporated into our concept of “heroic” poetry, as it existed in England by the latter tenth century.

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Wulf and EadwacerReloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer

Shiels

2022

Anglia

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Grendel’s Mother and the Women of the Völsung-Nibelung Tradition

Vowell

2022

Neophilologus

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The Lonely Afterlives of Early English Queens

Firth

Schilling

2022

Neophilologus

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Queens were important figures within the court communities of pre-Norman England, their status defined by their relationship to the king, whether as queen-consort, queen-mother, queen-regent, or queen-dowager. These were positions with an attendant degree of prestige and authority, but a vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the king’s fortunes. Often this would lead to periods of exile from the court community. Such exiled queens could find refuge on their own lands or other communities, such as abbeys and foreign courts. This removal from the centre of power allowed the king to minimise or control any vestigial queenly status or authority, and guard against the exiled queen becoming a locus for alternative political factions. These queens-in-exile form the focus of this article, which seeks to establish not only the patterns and contexts that allowed such social isolation to occur, but queens’ emotional responses to it. Here there are four interlinked concepts: social isolation (exile), emotional isolation (loneliness), social loneliness (the absence of community), and emotional loneliness (the absence of a close individual). These are observable across the experiences of an array of literary and historical pre-Norman queens, from Beowulf and Elene through to royal women, such as Æthelflæd (d. 918), Eadgifu (d. c.966), and Emma of Normandy (d. 1052). Through the analysis of such experiences, it is possible to construct cultural perspectives on the exercise of queenly authority, on queenly vulnerability, and on queenly affect.

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Identifying the Narrator of Wulf and Eadwacer? Signy, the Heroides and the Adaptation of Classical Models in Old English Literature

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

Wulf and EadwacerReloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer

Wulf and EadwacerReloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer

Grendel’s Mother and the Women of the Völsung-Nibelung Tradition

The Lonely Afterlives of Early English Queens

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