This document provides an overview of Anglo-Saxon lyric and elegiac poetry, including the common themes of exile and loss/hardship. It discusses the literary devices used in these poems such as rhythm, kennings, caesuras, alliteration, and assonance. It then analyzes the poem "The Seafarer", noting that the speaker is a lonely seafarer who experiences desolation at sea but continually returns, and interprets the poem as viewing life as exile while heaven is the only true home.

1. The Seafarer
&
Other Anglo-Saxon Lyrics
British Literature

2. LYRIC POETRY
• Lyric poem : expresses the thoughts &
feelings of a single speaker
• usually retells events in the speaker’s life

3. ELEGAIC POETRY (ELEGY)
• Elegy : mourns the loss of someone or
something

4. COMMON THEMES
• Exile : to be forced to leave one’s home
• Loss/Hardship

5. LITERARY DEVICES
•
•
•
•
Rhythm : lines usually have 4 strong beats
Kenning : two-word metaphorical name
Caesura : rhythmic break in a line, where the
reader could pause for a breath
Alliteration : the repetition of beginning
consonant sounds in accented syllables
– Ex) r aving r abbids
• Assonance : the repetition of vowel sounds in
unrhymed, stressed syllables
– Ex) ba ttered ra mparts

6. “The Seafarer”
• Speaker=lonely seafarer who “drowns in
desolation” at sea, but returns to it again &
again
• exile=life itself is exile; the only home is
heaven
• elegy for the past

7. “The Seafarer”
• Speaker=lonely seafarer who “drowns in
desolation” at sea, but returns to it again &
again
• exile=life itself is exile; the only home is
heaven
• elegy for the past