A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Seafarer"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's The Lottery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Plans Handbook: Auto Detailing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for "Postmodernism" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Seafarer"
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for Lord Alfred Tennyson's "The Eagle" Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Ready Reference Treatise: The Spanish Tragedy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Donne's "Song" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Donne's "The Canonization" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe English Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Herbert's "Easter Wings" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Carl Sandburg's “Chicago” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutline of the history of the English language and literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMary Shelley The Dover Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMacBeth (Annotated) Vocabulary Stretcher Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHerman Melville The Dover Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Sherman Alexie's "Defending Walt Whitman" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who are You?" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoetry Guide: P. B. Shelley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Romanticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Austen The Dover Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Herbert's "Virtue" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Beowulf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Extant Odes of Pindar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwelve Years a Slave Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Robert Frost's Sforpping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Teaching Methods & Materials For You
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack Reacher Reading Order: The Complete Lee Child’s Reading List Of Jack Reacher Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Personal Finance for Beginners - A Simple Guide to Take Control of Your Financial Situation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Principles: Life and Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour: Mind Hack, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Tools of Learning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Closing of the American Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside American Education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (10th Anniversary, Revised Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How To Be Hilarious and Quick-Witted in Everyday Conversation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Take Smart Notes. One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Four-Hour School Day: How You and Your Kids Can Thrive in the Homeschool Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dare To Lead Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From 150 to 179 on the LSAT Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Seafarer"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Seafarer" - Gale
1
The Seafarer
Anonymous
c. 450–c. 1100
Introduction
The Seafarer
was first discovered in the Exeter Book, a hand-copied manuscript containing the largest known collection of Old English poetry, which is kept at Exeter Cathedral, England. The Seafarer
has its origins in the Old English period of English literature, 450-1100, a time when very few people knew how to read or write. Old English (the predecessor of modern English) is the name given to the Germanic tongues brought to England by the invading tribes who crossed the English channel from Northern Europe. Old English resembles German and Scandinavian languages, and one cannot read it without at least one year of intense study. Even in its translated form, The Seafarer
provides an accurate portrait of the sense of stoic endurance, suffering, loneliness, and spiritual yearning so characteristic of Old English poetry. The Seafarer
is divisible into two sections, the first elegiac and the second didactic. The Seafarer
can be read as two poems on separate subjects or as one poem moving between two subjects. Moreover, the poem can be read as a dramatic monologue, the thoughts of one person, or as a dialogue between two people. The first section is a painfully personal description of the suffering and mysterious attractions of life at sea. In the second section, the speaker makes an abrupt shift to moral speculation about the fleeting nature of fame, fortune, and life itself, ending with an explicitly Christian view of God as wrathful and powerful. In this section, the speaker urges the reader to forget earthly accomplishments and anticipate God’s judgment in the afterlife. The poem addresses both pagan and Christian ideas about overcoming this sense of suffering and loneliness. For example, the speaker discusses being buried with treasure and winning glory in battle (pagan) and also fearing God’s judgment in the afterlife (Christian). Moreover, The Seafarer
can be thought of as an allegory discussing life as a journey and the human condition as that of exile from God on the sea of life. For comparison, read Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Whatever themes one finds in the poem, The Seafarer
is a powerful account of a sensitive poet’s interaction with his environment.
Poem Summary
Lines 1-5
The elegiac, personal tone is established from the beginning. The speaker pleads to his audience about his honesty and his personal self-revelation to come. He tells of the limitless suffering, sorrow, and pain and his long experience in various ships and ports. The speaker never explains exactly why he is driven to take to the ocean.
Lines 6-11
Here, the speaker conveys intense, concrete images of cold, anxiety, stormy seas, and rugged shorelines. The comparisons relating to imprisonment are many, combining to drag the speaker into