A proposal for a translation of the poem The Wife’s Lament

Abstract

This project involves translating the Old English poem of The Wife’s Lament that can be found in the Exeter Book, a very old codex that collects Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. There are several controversies surrounding the poem due to the lack of information regarding the author and date in which the narrative was written. The main source used to carry on with the translation, is A Guide to Old English by Mitchell & Robinson (pp. 265-267) (1992). The poem used for this project has been extracted from this book. Furthermore, the book also provides a glossary in the last pages with specific annotations concerning the poem which is being described. The purpose of this paper is to provide a proposal for a translation of The Wife’s Lament and present which choices a translator has to make in order to preserve the original intention of the author regarding meaning and stylistic features of the text. An explanation of the principal characteristics of the narrative style and genre will also be provided at the beginning, paying special focus to the features of Old English elegies. Finally, the most popular theories that scholars support regarding the origins and meaning of the text will also be mentioned.