The Wanderer

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 950

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Although its themes of exploring existential loneliness in a harsh and ungiving world resonate with many contemporary readers, the form of The Wanderer reveals its Medieval roots. Like other British poems preserved from the Middle Ages, the poem’s form and meter reflect the cultural perception of poetry as a public art form. Without widespread access to print media, poems were regarded as public events. They were designed to be recited by traveling minstrels who would present their works to audiences, sometimes in public gatherings or in the great courts of local lords on special occasions.

In this, The Wanderer appears to be an exceptional expression of Medieval literature, as the poem, minus the framing first and last stanzas that reflect the work of a later editor, is essentially an interior monologue. The heroic character struggles to come to terms with his profound physical and spiritual isolation. Given its emotional gravitas and forbidding angst, the poem would not have fit easily within public recitations. Medieval scholars suggest the text, which was certainly recited, was more a reflective text, a rare work for private contemplation.

Despite generations of editors retranslating and revisiting the poem’s form, stanza breaks have remained constant through successive versions. The body of the text, which records a solitary figure working through both memories and dreams, is largely reactive and offers little action, more traditional in Medieval poems. Thus, the stanza breaks reflect a sort of stream of consciousness form as the Wanderer searches for some logic to his life and some purpose to all his losses, even as he spirals to his closing assertion that the world is empty, cold, and harsh.

Caesuras and Alliteration

Given the cultural traditions of the Middle Ages in which poetry was regarded as an oral rather than written form, The Wanderer reflects two elements particular to poetry designed for public recitation: medial caesuras, regular breaks within the lines of the poem to encourage more dramatic recitation; and alliteration, the regular patterning of words with the same initial sounds as a way to encourage and facilitate memorization and to improve the sonic impact of the spoken lines.

The caesura, from the Italian meaning “to cut,” offers the opportunity for a conversational, less deliberate recitation. Much like a rest within a line of music, the caesura directs the performer to pause, a chance to acknowledge the audience and, in turn, to create dramatic effect. The pause becomes a kind of gathering moment before moving on. The poem here uses a variety of such medial strategies, including commas, periods, embedded descriptive information, and semicolons. The effects of medial caesuras are best heard with public, even melodramatic, recitation rather than in sustained silent reading.

Before the poetic arts began to manipulate lines through the vehicles of rhythm and rhyme, alliteration was a way to distinguish poetry from conversation and, in turn, a way to elevate the subject matter. Carefully preserved through generations of translation, alliteration enhances the sonic effect of the poem. The pattern of repeating sounds within lines is constant throughout the poem. Take Lines 28-30, in which the Wanderer acknowledges his alienation:

He who has put it to a test

Knows how cruel a companion is sorrow

For one who has few friendly protectors.

The lines use initial soft sibilant sounds (h’s, the open vowels) to create a feeling of desolation and emptiness, but that aural pattern is accented by harsher initial guttural sounds (p’s, t’s, f’s, hard c’s), to create aurally the interiority of the warrior who is torn between sorrow and stoic acceptance. Alliteration thus sustains recitation and enhances the poem’s themes.

Speaker

The poem actually takes place in two different temporal spaces: the meditations of the Wanderer himself, and the speaker who frames those meditations in brief prologue- and epilogue-like stanzas.

The poem is divided. In all but a handful of lines, the defeated warrior speaks aloud to himself alone because he distrusts any inclination to share his emotions with anyone else. Framing that poignant confession, a speaker offers a reassuring perspective of hope and comfort that reflects the speaker’s familiarity with the gospel of Christianity, a message unavailable to the sorrowful warrior. In this, the framing device reveals the likelihood, as many Medieval scholars have come to agree, that centuries may separate the main text from its frame.

The woeful ruminations of the lonely warrior who walks along the edges of a winter-frosted sea, pondering the implications of his people’s defeat, reflect the diction and syntax typical of late Norse literatures. The tragedy of his isolation and the hard-earned wisdom that after everything, no joys, no friendships, no sense of his identity survive are rendered in language that reflects the culture of a pre-Christian Britain, most likely the fifth or sixth centuries. The two framing sections, however, reflect the diction and syntax of a much later Britain. In addition, that composer introduces the inspirational hope of a Christian God and the tantalizing promise of a radiant afterlife that considerably redefines the travails of the Wanderer.

Given these two speakers, the poem becomes a parable. The figure of the Wanderer becomes an exemplum of the existential anxiety inevitable without access to the love of a Christian God.