The Politics of Tradition

In recent years, Anglo-Saxonists have widened the scope of their studies to include not only various aspects of Anglo-Saxon society and literature, but also their own discipline. Studying the scholarship on The Wife’s Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, Åström examines the roles of these scholars in the critical history of the two poems. These poems are two of the most haunting, and at the same time cryptic, texts of the entire Old English corpus. Because of these characteristics, the research they inspire is wide-ranging, imaginative and provocative. The study focuses mainly on two aspects of scholarly research: the emergence of a professional identity among Anglo-Saxonist scholars and their choice of either a metaphoric or metonymic approach to the material. A final chapter charts the concomitant changes within Old English feminist studies. The study summarises the approaches to points of ambiguity in the poems and provides a comprehensive bibliography of twentieth century scholarship on the two texts, which should make it not only a concise introduction to the field of Old English studies, but also a useful work of reference for anyone wishing to pursue further research on the poems.