Reaction to "The Ambiguity Of Wulf And Eadwacer"

     In Peter Baker's scholarly journal "The Ambiguity Of Wulf And Eadwacer," he discusses how critics have had difficulty in understanding the meaning of the story in the poem, "Wulf and Eadwacer." Baker writes that "Interpretations multiply and plain places are made rough; the reader, faced with deciding whether the poem is a riddle of a charm, a canine romance or the lament of a woman for her absent lover, may well wonder if he can be certain of anything about it." Baker also points out that Arnold Davidson stated that, "The very fact that the poem can be read in so many different ways suggests that it might be ambiguous and perhaps deliberately so."

     

     In his article, Baker points out that it is commonly accepted that the speaker of this poem is in fact a woman. The reason for this is that the speaker is concerned for Wulf's safety. While this doesn't ensure that the speaker is, the argument can be made that the speaker is concerned for him because they are lovers. A more factually grounded piece of evidence that lies in the text is that in line ten of the poem, the nominative feminine Old English word "reotugu" is used. Baker goes on to say that most critics agree that the speaker is a captive in a foreign land. Wulf is her lover and an outlaw, and Eadwacer is her tyrant husband. Baker concludes however, that it is more likely that Wulf is her husband. He thinks that Wulf has been outlawed by the speakers people and she, because she is the wife of an outlaw, has been sent to live on an island where Eadwacer watches over her and has made love to her. Regardless of Baker's interpretation, the poem is still ambiguous. Baker thinks that this ambiguity is more artistic than it is puzzling and that it justifies the poems reputation as an old English masterpiece. 

     I took a great interest in this article because I experienced my own struggles in trying to interpret this text when I was writing about it for my midterm paper. There is much that is clearly undefined even in only reading the text as it is provided in our textbook. Despite this however, outside of our textbook there is an even larger debate over what the text is in fact saying, let alone what it means. Considering that this text was written in Middle English, the text needs to be translated into Present Day English for us to understand it. Because of the nature of how languages change over time, many of the words from Middle English no longer exist in today's English and many of the words that do remain now mean something entirely different than what they used to. I was really interested to read that the original Middle English version of the poem contained the feminine nominative word "reotugu" because there was no evidence in the text that we read. I was wondering if the speaker was a man or a woman while I was writing my midterm paper, but was unable to find any concrete evidence for either sex. By understanding this, the theory of Wulf and the speaker being star crossed lovers makes a lot of sense. 

     Baker's article opened up my understanding of the poem entirely. It's incredible how scholarly discussion furthers all of the parties involved in the conversations understanding of what is going on in a text. If I hadn't taken the time to read Baker's article, my perspective of what is going on in this poem would be much more limited. I'm sure that other scholars helped him understand what was going on in this text before he was able to assert his own detailed interpretation.

Source: Baker, Peter S. "The Ambiguity Of 'Wulf And Eadwacer'." Studies In Philology 78.5 (1981): 39-51. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.