In addition to the handout there are numerous other translations of "The Seafarer" available on the 'net.
A KENNING is a poetic re-naming of something: "whales' home" for sea, for instance, and "gridiron" for football field.
ALLITERATION is a repetition of sounds. In childhood we learned that Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. This silly but delightful little line is memorable because of the alliteration. You didn't realize you were learning poetic techniques as an infant, did you!
A line of Anglo-Saxon almost always contains four beats, no matter the length of the line.
The swan almost surely symbolizes death -- cf. the concept of the swan song.
"The Seafarer" can be divided into three parts. The first part is me, me, me -- the seafarer feels very, very sorry for himself, though with good reason. In the middle part the seafarer indulges in theological and philosophical speculation. The final part is a hymn to God.
The poem is also something of an elegy, a remembrance, and the seafarer remembers the wealth and power of Rome and of Britain as a province of Rome from the 1st through the 4th centuries.
"Home," of course, is Heaven.
The wyrd, or fate, is the Anglo-Saxon pagan concept of determinism, the idea that we have no choices in life. The concept of determinism lingers in English, despite the conflicting Christian idea of freedom of choice.
I hope you someday have a chance to study "The Seafarer," "The Wanderer," and at least some parts of Beowulf in a literature course or, better yet, on your own, because all of life is a matter of learning.
Note that the titles of "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer" are in quotation marks because they are short works, and Beowulf is in italics because this is a long work.
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