Wulf and Eadwacer

Wulf and Eadwacer is an Old English poem of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and (in speculation on the poem's pre-history) as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem's complexities are, however, often asserted simply to defy genre classification, especially with regard to its narrative content. The poem's only extant text is found within the 10th century Exeter Book, along with certain other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.

The characterisation of the poem as a riddle is the oldest of its various treatments, the argument for which characterisation is based largely upon the obscurity of its subject and the placement of the poem within the Exeter Book, preceding the texts of the extant riddles themselves. However, its length and its various textual problems not characteristic of the riddles have led few scholars to pursue a simple riddle interpretation in modern textual study, and few such explanations have garnered serious attention in the recent history of its scholarship. Rather, the thematic similarity of the poem to The Wife's Lament, also found in the Exeter Book, has caused most modern scholars to place it, along with the Wife's Lament, solidly within the genre of the frauenlied, or woman's song and, more broadly, in that of the Old English elegy. Its adjacency to the riddles has, however, continued to inform commentary and interpretation. The short lines and refrains of Wulf and Eadwacer, along with the stream of consciousness narration have made it a popular feminist reading. These features aided by the rhythm and syntax, cause the emotional buildup of the poem.

For lack of any historical evidence or attestation outside the Exeter Book's text, historical criticism is limited to study of the Exeter Book itself and, particularly, to comparative study of its various contained works. Though it is generally held that the poem's composition occurred at a date significantly earlier than the date of the Exeter Book's own compilation, the degree of the poem's age relative to the codex is difficult if not impossible to ascertain. The dating of the poem in criticism is thus generally limited to what can be ascertained from the known history of the Exeter Book, for which suggested dates of compilation range from 960CE to 990CE. Though the on which the poem is recorded are not subject to any significant damage necessitating reconstruction, its textual problems and, particularly, the grammatical confusion of the first lines of the text, have resulted in widespread postulation that the initial lines of the poem may have been lost prior to its inclusion in the Exeter Book but subsequent to an earlier transcription. There is no manuscript evidence to directly support this theory, however.

...
Wikipedia