is an anonymous Old English poetic text included in folios 115a and 115b of Exeter, Cathedral Library 3501, [see separate entry on the Exeter Book]. The condensed expression of the first person speaker’s feelings and emotions along the 53 lines of the poem’s text, the lack of contextual information on who the speaker is or what his/her circumstances may be, in addition to some syntactic and semantic obscurities, have made of this medieval English text a very complex one, for which, accordingly, a number of different, even irreconcilable, interpretations have been given.
Linguistic evidence – the feminine inflection of adjectives and possessives that the speaker attributes to herself (geomorre, line 1a, minre sylfre, line 2a, minre weaþearfe, line 10b) –
1916 words
Citation: Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo. "The Wife's Lament". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 December 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8154, accessed 25 April 2024.]
