All that Holton was missing were the correct translations of unwearnum and anfloga, which would have clinched his arguments. Here, from above left, is a particularly attractive statement: "It has long since been recognized that The Seafarer is a unified whole and that it is possible to interpret the first sixty-three-and-a-half lines in a way that is consonant with, and leads up to, the moralizing conclusion." Written in 1982, it is amazing that there are still dense individuals, in 2014, echoing the dumber scholars of the early C20th, and rejecting the poem's 125 line unity.
ConstructionThe Seafarer can be divided into two precise halves: the first half is an exemplum; and the second half draws a didactic, hortatory, moral conclusion. Physically and aesthetically central to the composition is the word unwearnum. An exemplum, courtesy the Free Online Dictionary, is "an anecdote that supports a moral point or sustains an argument, used especially in medieval sermons." The verse moves from the concrete to the abstract, from experience to reflection. The indications are that the experience may have been personal, but unlikely to have been repeated more than a few times; between monasteries, as it were. It is also possible that all that was needed was a vivid imagination. No one supposes that Coleridge had himself endured the trials of his Ancient Mariner. At the same time, the poetic ingenuity, culture and sophistication demonstrated in this work were not entirely acquired at the helm of a sea-craft. Many commentaries during the 19th and 20th centuries have been convinced that the poem is purely autobiographical, whereas it is better understood as a vehicle for doctrine.The Seafarer is a soðgied. Bosworth-Toller, 1898: "gid, gidd, gied, gyd, gydd, ged, es; n. ..... II. as Old English or Saxon proverbs, riddles, and particular speeches were generally metrical, and their historians were bards, hence, A speech, tale, sermon, proverb, riddle; sermo, dictum, loquela proverbium, ænigma etc." The most natural conclusion, that The Seafarer is a sermon, has been sedulously avoided by all and sundry, except, of course, by Olof Arngart.See Jackson C.Campbell, Oral Poetry in The Seafarer, Speculum, 1960, pp 87-96. Quote: " .... many early Christian poets, rather than being simple, devout, and unlettered like Caedmon, or even professional pagan scops who continued to exercise their gift after being converted, were often English monks and churchmen, well-educated in Christian Latin literature and actively working to introduce Christian elements into their native poetic tradition, not only in the form of Biblical narratives, but also in matters of diction and formulaic phrasing. ... none of the evidence we can deduce from the poems we have actually precludes a poet putting together a poem in the solitude of a monastic library." Campbell, however, goes on to argue that "it appears" that The Seafarer, although undoubtedly a unity, is " a vivid and dramatic oral poem, full of the older conventions, [which] has been remembered and reworked by a lettered homilist-poet, a man with full knowledge of the style of oral poetry and even a certain reduced command of its formulas." Debatable.From Corey Owen's exemplary and wholly admirable The Seafarer: A Hypertext Edition, 1999:
Concluding paragraph of his General Introduction: "The value of The Seafarer as a guide for a monastic audience suffering from some sort of doubt, then, is made clear by the position in which the speaker places the audience. By inviting the listener/reader into the seafarer's experience and awareness at each stage of his crisis and conversion, the poet, or possibly poets, offers a subtle guide for one whose faith is suffering. Considering their access to such works as St. Gregory the Great's Cura Pastoralis and John Cassian's Institutes Monachorum, Anglo-Saxon monks would have considered notions of spiritual struggle commonplace. Such a monastic reader, in a time when encouragement is desired, could read The Seafarer, or almost any other spiritually didactic poem in the Exeter Book, and find a figure with whom he or she could identify. In The Seafarer, such a figure reminds a monastic audience of its purpose for renouncing the world: for þon me hatran sind / Dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade life / læne on londe (64b-66a), "for the joys of the Lord are dearer to me than this dead life, fleeting on land." Whether this poem was composed by a monastic poet or interpolated for an audience of monks remains unclear; however, the vernacular lyric's therapeutic function for such listeners or readers is confirmed by the speaker's description of his dedicating his life to a spiritual purpose." Image of St John, right, from the Book of Moling, Trinity College, Dublin
Try The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature, by Charles D.Wright, 1993. 
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From History Today
November, 2010 |
Many other allusions mentioned by other commentators can be found in Corey Owen's annotated bibliography. © Charles Harrison-Wallace 2013, 2016 |
