History of English Literature Lecture 6
10th November 2010
9. Love elegies and love poetry  Wulf and Eadwacer, Wife's Lament and Husband's Message.
a. the passion, intense emotions and intimacy of expressing the pain of separation and longing for
the beloved;
b. the hopelessness of the situation in Wulf and Eadwacer and Wife's Lament  the elegies narrated
by women separated from their lovers;
c. the hope and desire to be reunited in The Husband's Message
d. the mysteries of the love poems  who are the speakers? What circumstances do they narrate?
10. Old English wisdom poems (e.g. Maxims, The Order of the World, the Fortunes of Men, The
Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn)
a. maxims, proverbs, moral and didactic instructions, dialogues/riddle contests(between King
Solomon and a man called Saturn)
b. their concern  discussing the nature of wisdom, the importance of exchanging and sharing
wisdom, the nature of life, the nature of life, the nature of things in the surrounding world
c. the form  often short, concise, sometimes unrelated statements  very proverbial and unclear
11. Anglo-Saxon charms  short texts employing the belief in verbal magic.
a. Bald's Leechbook  a 9th c. medical book containing sensible medical advice but also magical
medicine
(& )
12. Riddles in literature and culture
13. Old English riddles.
Often called riddlic poems.
Double entendre
The Age of Transition: The Norman Conquest
English chivalric literature and Arthurian romances
1. What happened to Anglo-Saxon England?
a. The times of crisis during the reign of King Ethelred the Unready (978-1016)  Viking invasions.
b. The era of Scandinavian Kings of England  Canute the Great (1016-1035), King of Denmark,
England and Norway, Harold Harefoot and Harthacanute.
c. Ethelred's son, Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) returns from exile in Normandy,
2. The Norman Conquest of 1066 and its socio-historic background.
Doomsday Book  census book.
3. The Norman Conquest and its cultural aftermath