The Seafarer Caesura
Oral Tradition Stories told orally during the Anglo-Saxon time period were carefully crafted, containing various literary features to make the stories easier to remember. A few of these literary techniques were the kenning and the caesura. A kenning is a two-word poetic renaming of a person, place, or thing; much like a metaphor. Scops used kennings often to add a sense of allure to the story and to give themselves a chance to remember the succeeding events in the story. In The Seafarer, in line thirty-three, hail is referred to as “The coldest seeds.” This kenning was used not only to emphasize how horridly cold the hail was, but also to give the listeners something to contemplate while the scop took a moment to recollect the next
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A caesura is the natural pause that occurs within a line of poetry. Storytellers like the scops of the Anglo-Saxon period used the pause to give themselves a chance to remember where they were in their storyline and to create a rhythm to make it easier to remember the long detailed stories. Line 17 in The Seafarer is a prime example of a caesura; “Hung with icicles. The hailstorms flew.” The pause in this middle of this line substantially increases the level of drama, which it projects. Since both of the sentences are short, the dramatic pause in the middle emphasizes the depressed loneliness that the scop is portraying, while still allowing for a pause to think. In The Wanderer, line 22 contains a caesura; “And I sailed away with sorrowful heart.” Even though there is no comma or period dividing the contents of this statement, there is a large space, which implies that one should pause. This pause draws attention to this line, and its theme of sorrow “I had few loved ones in this land” (Line 16) from The Wife’s Lament is an example of a caesura because it too contains a discontinuity. This gap in the middle of the sentence focuses attention on the latter half of the sentence. Not only does the gap emphasize what the scop intends for it to, it also allows for the scop to take yet another thinking
A caesura is the natural pause that occurs within a line of poetry. Storytellers like the scops of the Anglo-Saxon period used the pause to give themselves a chance to remember where they were in their storyline and to create a rhythm to make it easier to remember the long detailed stories. Line 17 in The Seafarer is a prime example of a caesura; “Hung with icicles. The hailstorms flew.” The pause in this middle of this line substantially increases the level of drama, which it projects. Since both of the sentences are short, the dramatic pause in the middle emphasizes the depressed loneliness that the scop is portraying, while still allowing for a pause to think. In The Wanderer, line 22 contains a caesura; “And I sailed away with sorrowful heart.” Even though there is no comma or period dividing the contents of this statement, there is a large space, which implies that one should pause. This pause draws attention to this line, and its theme of sorrow “I had few loved ones in this land” (Line 16) from The Wife’s Lament is an example of a caesura because it too contains a discontinuity. This gap in the middle of the sentence focuses attention on the latter half of the sentence. Not only does the gap emphasize what the scop intends for it to, it also allows for the scop to take yet another thinking