Debating the gender of the author of the poem the wifes lament v1

Debating the gender of the author of the poem "The Wife's Lament" The poem has been described as a text expressing a woman's feelings about her mood, but there has been much debate about the author's gender, with the opinion that this poem has male intervention, although the poem is the voice expressing the kidney without any mediator Answer “The Wife's Lament”, also known as “The Wife's Complaint” is an ancient 53-line English poem, which is copied in the Anglo-Saxon miscellaneous book Exoniensis Code or Exeter Book together with other elegies such as The Wanderer”, “The Seafarer”, and “Wulf and Eadwacer” ect This poem tells the story of a woman who falls into despair because she is separated from her husband, who is the man of the ruling class in their society He rejected her for unclear reasons, and then she was forced to become an exile and refugee, living on oak trees in strange and unfriendly land The female voice in the poem expresses the theme of sadness and exile, which makes it one of the most famous and studied poems in Old English classics Although this poem has been widely studied by writers and historians since the end of the 19th century, the historical origin of this poem is still ambiguous (just like a large number of Anglo-Saxon literature), resulting in a large number of translations and interpretations Some explanations go even further, which may imply that the protagonist's gender (wife/woman) is a duplication error The protagonist was originally a male Ignore this possible gender precision error, Most scholars read and study this article based on the assumption that, This may be a very early example of the unique female discourse in literature According to Klinck (1994), critics deny the female sex of the speaker on the grounds that female dramatic monologues are not characteristic of the literature of this period, and today seem to represent a hermeneutic position that is not strangely influenced by textual evidence As an important work of existing female discourse/rhetoric, the study of this poem continues to this day As Cheryl Glenn and other scholars have helped us realize, in order to redescribe the origin of female rhetoric, all historical times containing important clues should not be allowed to fade out of our collective consciousness without proper reflection Therefore, to begin to restore the rare historical rhetoric left to us by women in Anglo-Saxon times, And to link it with women's contribution to speech in the later period, scholars (especially those who specialize in women's rhetoric in history) must critically re-examine poems such as wife's lamentation, look for text remnants originating from any female gender, and distinguish them as important cultural contributions to discourse in Anglo-Saxon texts As Alexandra Olsen (1994) said when talking about ancient English poetry, he wants to define "feminism" as a way to admit that poetry or novels (whether written by men or women) may contain women's views Feminist reading is an attempt to restore the essence of women in early society The research in this field is very valuable for examining the connection and root causes of persecution of women in Anglo-Saxon period and many societies after that Recording and understanding the changes that began to create more oppressive cultures at the beginning of medieval European Christian doctrines will help feminist researchers record the early historical cycle of gender-based conquest and oppression and allow more contemporary comparisons However, in order to regard this article as an early example of rhetoric in women's voices, we must examine and understand the essence of how this particular woman speaks and who she may speak to Her voice lives in many fields, because her story is written as her inner dialogue, trying to understand what happened to her and how she felt about it However, if this poem is placed in the external context, her voice conveys a necessary rhetorical power In this essay, the writter thinks that "The Wife’s Lament" can be understood as a text of a woman's feelings about her interpersonal relationship There's something wrong with the text, because despite the controversy surrounding the author's gender and the very realistic possibility of some types of male endorsements in the text (although the voice representing oneself is not reconciled), The text seems to be happy to present the characteristics of public speech, which is an example of early female rhetoric surviving from Anglo-Saxon period, involving women's initiative and subjectivity The search for the survival of Anglo-Saxon female rhetoric has been going on for some time, although perhaps this narrow academic research category has not been fully explored In addition to the research done by Cheryl Glenn (1997) and other feminist scholars in retrieving the voice of women in the past, they put forward a very contemporary view of contemporary women's expression, which is linked with the continuity of literary research and left us as an example of medieval women's rhetoric Glenn talked about women's voices in her work Reversal of Essence She discussed her view that the poem may be composed of a woman, and in her opinion, it may even be composed of a woman She said that the exiled wife is both the voice of the poem and the protagonist of the poem, which proves that she thinks the poem is composed of a woman Although the writer does not fully believe that what writer read in “The Wife’s Lament” is the work of a completely unwilling female writer (although this is an immortal fact in Anglo-Saxon literary genre), it will give it the authority of Anglo-Saxon female rhetoric When discussing Anglo-Saxon poetry, other researchers try to break through the intermediary restriction of gender construction In an essay published in 1993, Jackie McClelland pointed out that there are many reasons to suspect that many people think that the narrator “The Wife’s Lament” is a woman, which is due to the subconscious tendency caused by social conditions She said that we must accept that the narrator is a woman, not because of tortuous themes or endings, but because we have been bound by social history and myths, predicting that the role of women is passive and obedient We assume that a "she "must wait for a "he"; Therefore, the narrator in the poem must be a female The writer will only agree with Glenn to a certain extent, and I am more sure of McClellan under these specific circumstances The emotional content of poetry is undoubtedly the recognized cultural structure of women's emotions, which is suitable for ordinary women and women in that social position The difference in my research lies in whether it is acceptable for a male author to faithfully and effectively reproduce the emotional content of female speeches If we assume that this is possible, even to a limited extent, does this reduce the value of women's speech as a rhetoric, especially when there are too few examples for reference? I am not saying that this poem may not have been written by a female poet, or at least it has not been seriously influenced by a female poet I'm just saying that when we admit our current concept of Anglo-Saxon social framework, there is an obvious possibility that this work is not a completely unreconciled or unfiltered female work An earlier article by Marilynn Desmond (1990) touched on a similar field, when she discussed the need to read women's voices in order to prevent them from disappearing from being heard in history Desmond pointed out that feminist readers must stay out of the patriarchal prejudice of male texts (feminist criticism), and she must restore female texts from their marginal position in culture and classics (female criticism) As I am in my position in this article, Desmond realizes in his works that trying to find the inherent problems of female rhetoric from the past, She pointed out that the expression of female subjectivity must play a role outside the patriarchal boundaries of Anglo-Saxon texts Feminist poetics must recognize the medieval attitude towards power and authors, which enables medieval people to put the voice of texts above historical authors or implicit authors Susan Morrison had a similar view in an article in 2000, she said that women's voices, such as wives' laments, are at the intersection of gender and genre, and must adapt to male’s customs, otherwise they will be abandoned, but as Barthes once said, to give an text a “author” and specify a corresponding explanation “is to impose restrictions on the text” Diane Watt discussed Anglo-Saxon women in her works, and she was well aware of the difficulties in studying female's literacy achievements during this period Despite pointing out these obstacles, Watt said at the end of the 2013 essay that traces can still be found reading strategies must take into account women's full or early participation in literature and culture In her later work, she bluntly said in the introduction that the history of female literature paid little attention to the contact between medieval women and literary history However, recent studies by Anglo-Saxon feminists show that women are the core of English literary tradition The writer believe that the discussion of poetry advocated by Watt is very relevant, although there is no specific detail of the author and direct evidence of male intercession The work as “The Wife’s Lament” cannot be ignored or belittled by the relative ambiguity surrounding the text, just like those that show traces of being rewritten by monks, or as works obscured and written in the literary history from the Bede era to the end of the 20th century and beyond Lisa Weston (2012) specially wrote about the influence of St Hilderis of Bajin Monastery on the Anglo-Saxon Monastery Literary Society According to Weston, both Aldhelm and Boniface mention that Hildelith helped develop the core literary text of the monastery, and Aldhelm's disciple Boniface also believes that Hildelith has similar literary ability and equal cultural power Weston believes that Hildelis nurtured her predecessor's sect through an implicit and clear sacred narrative, and then says at the end of this chapter, her redefinition of the ideology of her community has laid the foundation for spiritual strength and literary creation, which will become the characteristics of future generations All these studies point out the existence of female literacy and the existing evidence supporting the possibility of women participating in Anglo-Saxon cultural and literary traditions Therefore, the ideological standpoint of “The Wife’s Lament” is not only a personal exploration of interpersonal feelings from the perspective of women, but also a social and political criticism of Anglo-Saxon samurai culture and women's position in it It seems that it is not possible to directly target male-dominated monastery readers It is also completely impossible for one or more women to directly participate in the creation of this poem Unfortunately, there is no accurate assessment in the text or historical evidence, which enables us to specifically determine these possibilities However, this poem is composed of problematic ambiguities between the narrator's internal and external considerations (the narrator's personal thoughts and the public rhetorical statements inferred from her speech) The narrator allows, until today, for many reactions of readers, the text can be read convincingly in different ways and operate coherently on many levels According to Hough (2003), this can be regarded as a deliberate trick of the poet In writer’s opinion, a large number of interpretations of “The Wife’s Lament” since it was copied actually prove that the poet deliberately constructed the poem to read in various ways and at multiple levels, including the possibility that it was regarded as rhetoric by the narrator The narrative voice of “The Wife’s Lament” begins with the reflection of the first person in the heart When she began to share her personal thoughts, her wife was very sad because she lost a major relationship that made her a complete person She first talked about her despair and described her emotional control: “Full of grief, I make this poem about myself, my own fate I have the right to say what miseries I have endured since I grew up, new or old – never greater than now Endlessly I have suffered the wretchedness of exile.” She is sure that this is her words, and the next words will be her own cognitive thoughts, not filtered out through the views of another woman or man Readers are allowed to enter her thoughts and her personal grief, as if she were expressing her feelings in writing, and what she said there was isolated and close to her own consciousness Readers are asked to share, understand and be influenced by people's seclusion and meaningful contact desire, so that all people who experience the text can also experience her pain On the surface, when she read this poem, she said it alone and didn't say it to anyone in particular The wife said, “The man’s kinfolk hatched a plot to separate us so that we two should live most unhappy and farthest from one another in this wide world.” The narrator of this poem observes the dynamics of personal relations in the context of his extended family, and at the same time, she is deeply exploring her own sadness At this time, some external criticisms of the social and political arrangements of Anglo-Saxon culture began to appear in front of people who realized this difference, but at this time the most prominent emotional content in the poem still focused on her unbalanced relationship, while ancient English writers continued to present women and men as common problems in a similar way Here we find a small piece of scattered evidence, revealing the status of women in Anglo-Saxon society Apart from the actual power that a woman can gain in Anglo-Saxon culture, the woman she laments in this poem shows her helplessness in this situation But when she talked about her husband, friends, dear people and God, The ambiguity of the text reappeared, blurring the distinction between the people she might specifically refer to As Wentersdorf (1981) explained, the female speaker refers to one man (her husband or lover), two men (one husband, then the second husband), or even three men (the relatives of the two husbands and the second husband accuse their wives of being punished)? Even if readers of any era only want to explore the logic of one version of the plot in this poem, the example of possibility provided by Wintersdorf is a sharp reminder that this poem can follow many different discourse paths In doing so, if readers allow the development of external reading, the level of meaning will begin to multiply In this essay, the writer did this to explore my views on the rhetorical value of “The Wife’s Lament” The writer would also like to give an example of how the poet constructed this poem and this woman's voice The writer think this is to promote purposeful ambiguity and force readers to accept the possibility that this woman's voice is designed to engage in a larger and more realistic career, not just to tell a broken story of an exiled woman I'm not saying that my explanation is the only or correct reading, which should be accepted After a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of time has been completed, about what the poet is trying to do, this woman's voice However, with a sense of urgency, I declare that no matter who the author of this article is, male or female, although there are so many explanations in the poem that it is impossible to reach a complete consensus on the meaning of all potential aspects in this work, the rhetorical function of this female voice is not allowed to be silent However, regardless of the accuracy of the interpretation, if we want to believe that this is a female rhetoric truly rooted in female subjectivity, “The Wife’s Lament” is an extremely important example of the spread of early Anglo-Saxon feminism and must be incorporated into the study of early European female discourse In Cheryl Glenn’s feeling, whenever female find that we think that women in history have turned social pressure into chastity, obedience and silence, we need to laugh loudly and push each other's ribs The female need to remind ourselves that some of them may be pure, some may even be obedient (many of them are very brave), but none of them is silent These women have a lot to tell us – all the female have to is listen to their voices and keep silent Although the complex problems that often haunt “The Wife’s Lament” always belittle the works or belittle the works as rhetorical speeches, it is the complex structure that always makes women make her critical remarks and let them hear them The female voice in the wife's lament has become a criticism of the principles of Anglo-Saxon warriors, from a point of view that is often oppressed or belittled by patriarchal hegemony She said happily, “With glad countenance, how often we vowed that death alone – nothing else – would drive us apart That vow has been overthrown Our friendship is as if it had never been Far and near, I must suffer the feud of my much – beloved.” The narrator interspersed some comments in the story, which seemed to be related to the socio-political nature of her situation and how she viewed them Although this sentence is undoubtedly the narrator's statement of her personal ideological authority, if her statement is regarded as a general statement, it has a broader perspective, and she refers to all women with her concern for "I" Then she went on to say, " First my lord went away from his people here across the storm – tossed sea." This sentence makes the broader meaning of her words more relevant Her statement is not limited to saying that people who are important to her have left her She called him her "lord" and he left his people Therefore, under the background of the story, it is reasonable to believe that she describes him as the lord she loves, as well as her actual lord in the political sense and the lord of a specific group In this essay, the writer did this to explore my views on the rhetorical value of “The Wife’s Lament” The writer would also like to give an example of how the poet constructed this poem and this woman's voice The writer think this is to promote purposeful ambiguity and force readers to accept the possibility that this woman's voice is designed to engage in a larger and more realistic career, not just to tell a broken story of an exiled woman I'm not saying that my explanation is the only or correct reading, which should be accepted After a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of time has been completed, about what the poet is trying to do, this woman's voice However, with a sense of urgency, I declare that no matter who the author of this article is, male or female, although there are so many explanations in the poem that it is impossible to reach a complete consensus on the meaning of all potential aspects in this work, the rhetorical function of this female voice is not allowed to be silent However, regardless of the accuracy of the interpretation, if we want to believe that this is a female rhetoric truly rooted in female subjectivity, “The Wife’s Lament” is an extremely important example of the spread of early Anglo-Saxon feminism and must be incorporated into the study of early European female discourse In Cheryl Glenn’s feeling, whenever female find that we think that women in history have turned social pressure into chastity, obedience and silence, we need to laugh loudly and push each other's ribs The female need to remind ourselves that some of them may be pure, some may even be obedient (many of them are very brave), but none of them is silent These women have a lot to tell us – all the female have to is listen to their voices and keep silent Although the complex problems that often haunt “The Wife’s Lament” always belittle the works or belittle the works as rhetorical speeches, it is the complex structure that always makes women make her critical remarks and let them hear them In this essay, the writer did this to explore my views on the rhetorical value of “The Wife’s Lament” The writer would also like to give an example of how the poet constructed this poem and this woman's voice The writer think this is to promote purposeful ambiguity and force readers to accept the possibility that this woman's voice is designed to engage in a larger and more realistic career, not just to tell a broken story of an exiled woman I'm not saying that my explanation is the only or correct reading, which should be accepted After a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of time has been completed, about what the poet is trying to do, this woman's voice However, with a sense of urgency, I declare that no matter who the author of this article is, male or female, although there are so many explanations in the poem that it is impossible to reach a complete consensus on the meaning of all potential aspects in this work, the rhetorical function of this female voice is not allowed to be silent However, regardless of the accuracy of the interpretation, if we want to believe that this is a female rhetoric truly rooted in female subjectivity, “The Wife’s Lament” is an extremely important example of the spread of early Anglo-Saxon feminism and must be incorporated into the study of early European female discourse In Cheryl Glenn’s feeling, whenever female find that we think that women in history have turned social pressure into chastity, obedience and silence, we need to laugh loudly and push each other's ribs The female need to remind ourselves that some of them may be pure, some may even be obedient (many of them are very brave), but none of them is silent These women have a lot to tell us – all the female have to is listen to their voices and keep silent Although the complex problems that often haunt “The Wife’s Lament” always belittle the works or belittle the works as rhetorical speeches, it is the complex structure that always makes women make her critical remarks and let them hear them References Klinck, Anne L "Lyric Voice and the Feminine in Some Ancient and Mediaeval Frauenlieder." Florilegium 13 (1994): 13-36 Olsen, Alexandra H "Old English Women, Old English Men: A Reconsideration of `Minor' Characters," Old English Shorter Poems: Basic Readings, ed Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe, BRASE, vol 3, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc 1994, 65-83 Glenn, Cheryl Rhetoric Retold : Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997 Print Desmond, Marilynn "The Voice of Exile: Feminist Literary History and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Elegy." Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 572-90 Morrison, Susan "Unnatural Authority: Translating beyond the Heroic in The Wife's Lament." Medievalia et Humanistica 27 (2000): 19-31 Weston, Lisa “The Saint – Maker and the Saint: Hildelith Creates Ethelburg.” Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community Eds Brown, Jennifer N, and Donna A Bussell Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2012 Print Wentersdorf, Karl P The Situation of the Narrator in the Old English Wife's Lament Speculum, Vol 56, No (Jul., 1981), pp 492-516 Alfred David (translate) “The Wife’s Lament” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume  ... composed of a woman, and in her opinion, it may even be composed of a woman She said that the exiled wife is both the voice of the poem and the protagonist of the poem, which proves that she thinks the. .. relationship There's something wrong with the text, because despite the controversy surrounding the author' s gender and the very realistic possibility of some types of male endorsements in the text... unhappy and farthest from one another in this wide world.” The narrator of this poem observes the dynamics of personal relations in the context of his extended family, and at the same time, she