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The Text and The Composition of The Seafarer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert D. Stevick
Robert D. Stevick*
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle
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Extract

Textual cruces in The Seafarer, especially those near the end of the poem, have been not so much resolved as relegated to the lumber room in the mansion of poetry. On the one hand, oral-formulaic analysts regard The Seafarer as a verse text of 124 lines, predominantly formulaic, probably composed by a learned poet. The major problem, under this view, is that of deciding to what extent it is formulaic and then inferring the manner of composition: does the unique text represent a slightly defective record of oral composition? does it represent a poem composed entirely in writing, with deliberation foreign to oral composition, though employing traditional formulas of oral poetry? or does the text perhaps preserve orally composed sections that have been remembered by a deliberate, lettered poet who has built these sections into a poem he composed pen in hand? On the other hand, the historical-thematic analysts, also regarding the poem as a 124-line composition, employing inherited poetic language, continue to adduce evidence converging on the conclusion that a homiletic writer has shaped traditional verse materials to his own pious ends. One can no longer question the pervasiveness of doctrinal and homiletic devices in the conception and diction of the poem. Both oral-formulaic analysis and historical-thematic analysis, by their very nature, tend to assume the integrity of an Old English text—allowing, of course, for copyists' lapses of attention and errors in understanding. Neither approach, however, has been particularly concerned to resolve some persistent question of the integrity of the text or to suggest ways of regarding the textual cruces in the final section of the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1965 , pp. 332 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

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References

1 Jackson J. Campbell, “Oral Poetry in The Seafarer,” Speculum, xxxv (1960), 87–96.

2 Wayne A. O'Neil, “Another Look at Oral Poetry in The Seafarer,” Speculum, xxxv (1960), 596–600.

3 W. W. Lawrence, “The Wanderer and The Seafarer,” JEGP, iv (1902), 460–480.

4 Robert E. Diamond's formulation of the question of the nature of Old English poetic texts, with respect to manner of composition, appears to be becoming standard; that formulation is reflected in the parallel questions in the preceding paragraph. Cf. Diamond, “The Diction of the Signed Poems of Cynewulf,” PQ, xxxviii (1959), 228–241.

5 I use the text in George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Exeter Book (New York, 1936), pp. 143–147.

6 Krapp-Dobbie, p. xi.

7 Blanche Colton Williams, for example, in Gnomic Poetry in Anglo-Saxon (New York, 1914), suggests that folio 83 “is probably out of order” (p. 49). But Krapp and Dobbie, in concluding a resumé of textual analyses, remark that “in the wanderer and the seafarer, in spite of the minor inconsistencies and the abrupt transitions which we find, structural dissection must be accepted with caution as a formula for the establishment of the text” (p. xxxix).

8 G. V. Smithers, “The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer,” Medium Ævum, xxvi (1957), 137–153; xxviii (1959), 1–22; xxviii (1959), 99–104 (an appendix to the article).

9 I. L. Gordon, ed., The Seafarer (London, 1960).

10 J. Cross, especially in “On the Allegory in The Seafarer—Illustrative Notes,” Medium Ævum, xxviii (1959), 104–106.

11 See Gordon, pp. 1–12.

12 The punctuation in Krapp-Dobbie typically represents this view.

13 Stanley B. Greenfield, “ ‘The Wanderer’: A Reconsideration of Theme and Structure,” JEGP, l (1951), 451–465.

14 See Robert D. Stevick, “Formal Aspects of The Wife's Lament,” JEGP, lix (1960), 21–25.

15 In “The Authority of Old English Poetical Manuscripts” and “The Exeter Book,” in Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), Kenneth Sisam demonstrates a number of ways in which poetical manuscripts—especially as copies—are susceptible to errors; none of them, however, pertain to the argument I am pursuing, except in so far as they demonstrate generally the fact that scribes often ignored obvious flaws in the texts. Some of his best evidence is from the Exeter Book.

16 I use the text in Krapp-Dobbie.

17 For punctuation in the manuscript I follow the facsimile in The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry (London, 1933).

18 The point at the end of l. 41 apparently stems from the convention of pointing parallel half-lines; the points terminating ll. 79, 84 are considered below.

19 This corresponds to Maxims i, l. 50, in the Exeter Book: Styran sceol mon strongum mode.

20 Gordon, notes to The Seafarer, ll, 113–115a.

21 Gordon, pp. 3–4 and notes to ll. 64b–66a.

22 Gordon. See especially the Glossary.

23 Sisam's argument (see n. 15) enables us to rule out the notion that a scribe would incline to “correct,” interpolate, or revise the text, or that a bad text would not be allowed to stand. He further remarks, “it is certain that after the Exeter Book left the scriptorium, little was done by later readers to remove even crude errors from the text” (p. 98).