BA MA ENGLISH Old English Christian or Religious Poetry, Lyrical and Elegiac Poetry

 Old English Christian or Religious Poetry

With the coming of Christianity there took place a radical transformation in the life of the English people. Christianity was established in England by a process of slow assimilation. In literature

at first there was only an intermingling of Christian and pagan elements but later poets started writing on exclusively Christian themes, deriving their material from the Bible and the lives of the

saints. This religious poetry may be divided into two sections: (i) the Caedmon group and (i) the Cynewulf group.

Caedmon

In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede narrates the story of the lay brother Caedmon who lived in the monastery of Whitby He was a tongue-tied and unlettered herdsman who would leave the feast in embarrassment when he saw the harp coming near him and go home. Once he had left such a banquet and going to the cattle stall had fallen asleep. Then a being appeared to him and bade him Sing. When he answered, I cannot sing, He spoke to him again and said, Nevertheless thou canst sing to me.' When demon asked what he should sing he said, Sing me the Creation'. Then Caedmon began hearing the verses which he had never heard before. When he woke up, he memorized these verses and sang them many more. 

He was received in the monastery by the Abbess Hilda and there he passed his life creating monastery poetry He died in 680 A.D. Caedmon sang of the creation of the world, of the origin of a magnificient Promised Land, of the Incarnation, Passion and Ascension of Christ, the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, their entrance into the promised land, of the incarnation, passion and ascension of Christ, coming of the Holy Ghost, the teaching of Apostles etc

A group of four poems is attributed to Caedmon. These are (1) Genesis (2) Exodus, (3) Daniel and (4) Christ and Satan. But it is not impossible that the nine-line hymn quoted by Bede are the only authentic lines by Caedmon, while the rest are by his imitators. All these poems are contained in the manuscript of Bodlein Library. The coming of the Holy Ghost, the teaching of the apostles ere these poems are contained in a manuscript in the Bodleian Library.

(i) Genesis: Originally of 3000 lines, this was roughly a paraphrase of the Bible. In 1875 the German scholar Sievers detected two kinds of style and assumed that lines 235-851 were perhaps an interpolation of the lost Germanic paraphrase of the Old Testament. He was proved

right when in 1894 this German work was found in the Vatican Library. It is not known how Genesis B came to be interpolated in Genesis A. The poet of Genesis A merely gives a faithful rendering of the Biblical narrative.

Genesis B or Later Genesis, the superior German interpolation is a beautiful poem with attempts at characterization and analysis of motive. It has striking resemblances with Milton's Paradise Lost. However, it is only nominally a religious poem as the ego-centric spirit of Heroic poetry seems to dominate.

(ii) Exodus: This gives a forceful description of the Egyptian disaster at Red sea, the pursuit and defeat of the Egyptians etc. The Surges of battle are described with the Heroic vigour of Pagan

Germany. The author of Exodus is given to opulence of detail which aims at grandeur but misses sublimity.

iii) Daniel: Here the poet follows his biblical source closely, and seems to use his matter for homiletic purposes. It is less interesting than Exodus but the song of praise is full of eloquence.

(iv) Christ and Satan: This is in three parts, dealing with the Fall of the Angels, Christ's Harrowing of Hell and Christ's Temptation respectively. It has a strong religious fervour. The apostles of Christ remind one of Beowulf's companions.

(v) Judith: This 350-line fragment is also sometimes attributed to Caedmon. It is found in the Beowulf manuscript, probably dating from the ninth century. It describes the banquet in Assyrian camp, the bringing of Judith to the drunken Hollowness, her beheading of him and escapade,, and the defeat and flight of the Assyrians. The language is opulent and the tone is one of passion.

Lyrical and Elegiac Poetry

The notable lyric and elegiac poems of the Old English period include The Wanderer, The Seafarer The Wife's lament, The Husband' Meco wulf and Eadwacer and The Ruin.

(a) The Wanderer

This is the story of a young thief who has formerly known happiness, but now after the death of his lord, he wanders about in search of another protector beyond the seas. In the second part we find a note of calm acceptance and a more mature outlook. The speaker laments:

Here possessions are transient, here friends one transient, here man is transient, here woman is transient, all this firm-set earth becomes empty.

The poem ends on a conventional Christian note that good is the man who does not lose his faith in God. Disintegrators claim that there are actually three speakers, but it has now been established that there is only one who at the end of the poem is resigned to the fact of universal mutability

(b) The Seafarer

This poem of 120 lines preserved in the Exeter Book, is by far the most original Anglo-Saxon lyric. It is apparently a dialogue between a veteran mariner describing the lonely sufferings of life at sea, and a youth, eager to brave the dangers of the waters. But the poem may very well be the monologue of an old seaman who, though remembering the sufferings at sea, yet has a restless spirit and a pagan fascination for a sailor's life. A feeling of contempt for earthly luxuries and his yearning to set forth on the voyage lead him to think of the fleeting nature of earthly joys.

The poem may also be an allegory on human life which is seen as a sea. There are a large number of sea-escapes with a haunting beauty of their own. This deep attraction for the life of a mariner is found later in the poetry of Byron, Kipling, Masefield etc.

(c) The Wife's Lament

This is perhaps one of the earliest English love poems. The manuscript is preserved in the Exeter Book. It is an elegiac lament of a woman separated from her husband and banished to the wilderness by the foe. Full of the despair of separation, the wife tears her passion to

tatters and calls down a curse upon the foe, praying that he may know the misery of exile and loneliness. She pines for her former days of warm conjugal love. The poet here successfully presents the passionate yearning of a loving and distressed heart.

(d) The Husband's Message

This too is preserved in the Exeter Book. It is probably a sequel to the former poem. The poem is in the form of a message engraved on a wooden tablet which comes to assure the waiting wife of her husband's love. He has prepared a new home for her abroad and calls on her to sail there in the spring when the cuckoo would sing. The husband is probably in exile in some foreign land from where he assures her of his love and devotion to her. The runic letters at the

end of the poem are perhaps a kind of secret sign from the husband understood by the wife.

(e) Wulf and Eadwacer

This poem of 18 lines is formed in the Exeter Book immediately preceding The Riddles and there was a view that this was a riddle itself. It is probably a dramatic monologue. The speaker 15 a woman and apparently a captive in a foreign land. She longs for Wulf, her outlawed lover. Her husband Eadwacer is tyrannical and she entreats Wulf to save her from her present distress. Intensely personal, it is one of the earliest English poems to have a pronounced amorous bent.

(f)The Ruin or the Ruined Berg

This is an elegy on a ruined city with crumbling walls and departed glory. The city is conjectured to be a ruined Roman city such as Bath with its hot springs. The poet then turns to contemplating the general mutability of things. The Ruin is an elegy with a difference as it

mourns not the death or misfortune of a person but of a ruined city. Full of nostalgia and eloquent sorrow, this is one of the greatest Old English elegiac poems. The Charms contain much Old English superstition and folklore and have definite poetic elements. The Riddles are poetical descriptions of particular objects with their true identity concealed.