The least elegiac of the elegies: A contextual glance atThe Husband's message

Nostalgic evocation and social privilege in the Old English elegies

“…This is true of even the most problematic and least 'elegiac' of the elegies. 21 The Husband's Message, although less melancholic in tone than the other Exeter Book elegies, still accentuates an absence in the speaker's present, that he lacks his wife, in the face of his more fulfilling past, when they had been together. The speaker of The Husband's Message initially introduces a nostalgic sense into the elegy when he commands his female listener to remember her past, "þaet þu sinchroden sylf gemunde / on gewitlocan wordbeotunga, / þe git on aerdagum oft gespraecon …" (ll.…”