“Wild nature” in Old English poetry: from the description of the visible to the representation of the sensible

Abstract

Old English poetic descriptions of “wild nature” are often descriptions of places where the exile lives in loneliness and feels physical and psychological pains. The “elsewhere” coincides with a realistic wintry North-European landscape characterized by unpleasant sensory perceptions as darkness and cold, that in turn evoke unpleasant emotions such as sorrow, anxiety, grief; the “elsewhere” is a place of absence, of loss, without light and heat, without the joy and harmony of social life. These complex representations use topoi, that are also shared in classical and medieval Latin tradition; Old English poetry shows indeed a complex semantic layering as a result of the complex cultural stratification of the society in which it is grounded. Analyzing some different poems – such as Beowulf, Andreas, Wanderer, Seafarer, Menologium, Salomon and Saturn II – this study aims to demonstrate how different modes of representation of this theme reveal in each poem a different degree of originality.