"Beowulf" and Other Old English Poems

A NOTE ON GENRES

A NOTE ON GENRES The shorter Old English poems that follow are grouped by genre, as is common in collections of this sort. The caveat here is that the poems are not identified by either genre or title in the manuscripts . Genres can sometimes be identified by formal motifs such as riddles opening with “I saw a creature” and closing with “Say what I mean,” or charms opening with medicinal instructions such as “Boil feverfew and plantain and the red nettle.” Other genres can be identified by thematic motifs such as the presence of an elegiac speaker who laments his or her misfortune and attempts find some consolation, or the heroic concern with battlefield loyalty to one’s lord. Poems sometimes show characteristics of different genres. The vellum creature of Riddle 24 laments in elegiac fashion the loss of its life as the hide of a living animal, and the shield and sword creatures of Riddles 3 and 18 detail their heroic battle-field lives. “The Dream of the Rood,” an important religious poem, shows formal similarities with the riddles as the cross recalls its own life, as well as an elegiac tone as it laments being torn from its natural family and turned into an instrument of destruction. A few poems have changed their generic category over time as critics have reinterpreted them. “Wulf and Eadwacer” was once thought to be a riddle because of its paradoxes and enigmatic language, especially its ending, but now is generally classified as an elegy spoken by a woman, similar to “The Wife’s Lament.” “Deor” has been variously categorized as a heroic poem, an elegy, and a charm. 126 | OTHER OLD ENGLISH POEMS At the beginning of each generic section, I point out some of the essential characteristics of the genre, but it is important to remember that such generic groups are defined by post-medieval readers and not by the original poets, and that a certain amount of generic cross-over or ambiguity is not uncommon in the poems. ...