sīþ, wræcsīþ: Literal or Figurative?

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_1723
dc.contributor.author	Sipione Concetta
dc.title	sīþ, wræcsīþ: Literal or Figurative?. Considerations on Genre and Gender Conventions in Translating from Old English
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	it
dc.description.abstract	The Old English poem The Wife’s Lament is an extremely conventional and, at the same time, original text. It portrays a female character suffering for the absence of her loved one, through the framework of the so-called ‘elegiac’ style and a mainly heroic vocabulary. The traditional exile theme is, thus, interwoven with the uncommon motif of love sickness. While this appraisal of the poem is the most widely accepted one, disagreement still remains about the translation of some keywords, strictly related to the exile theme, such as sīþ or wræcsīþ. The aim of this paper is to examine diverging readings and glosses of the above mentioned ‘exilic/elegiac’ keywords, and to show that an accurate translation should not neglect a thorough appraisal of the text in its complexity and the association with related literary patterns and imagery in other poetic and prose texts.
dc.relation.ispartof	Medieval and Modern Philologies
dc.relation.ispartof	Serie occidentale
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.issued	2018-05-24
dc.dateAccepted	2018-02-19
dc.dateSubmitted	2018-01-17
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-250-5/si-wrcsi-literal-or-figurative/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-248-2/006
dc.identifier.issn	2610-945X
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9441
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-250-5
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-248-2
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Exile
dc.subject	Exile
dc.subject	Genre
dc.subject	Genre
dc.subject	Literal or figurative
dc.subject	Literal or figurative
dc.subject	The Wife’s Lament
dc.subject	The Wife’s Lament
dc.subject	Translation
dc.subject	Translation

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

sīþ, wræcsīþ: Literal or Figurative?

Considerations on Genre and Gender Conventions in Translating from Old English

Concetta Sipione Università degli Studi di Catania, Italia

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abstract

The Old English poem The Wife’s Lament is an extremely conventional and, at the same time, original text. It portrays a female character suffering for the absence of her loved one, through the framework of the so-called ‘elegiac’ style and a mainly heroic vocabulary. The traditional exile theme is, thus, interwoven with the uncommon motif of love sickness. While this appraisal of the poem is the most widely accepted one, disagreement still remains about the translation of some keywords, strictly related to the exile theme, such as sīþ or wræcsīþ. The aim of this paper is to examine diverging readings and glosses of the above mentioned ‘exilic/elegiac’ keywords, and to show that an accurate translation should not neglect a thorough appraisal of the text in its complexity and the association with related literary patterns and imagery in other poetic and prose texts.

Published

May 24, 2018

Accepted

Feb. 19, 2018

Submitted

Jan. 17, 2018

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-250-5

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-248-2

Keywords: Genre • Translation • Exile • The Wife’s Lament • Literal or figurative

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-248-2/006

Copyright: © 2018 Concetta Sipione. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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