Riflessioni gnomiche in The Wife’s Lament

As it is now widely recognised, The Wife’s Lament, one of the most intriguing and enigmatic Old English poems, is based on a female speaker uttering her grief for the absence of her loved one. Partly due to its grammatical ambiguities and the unclear chronology of events, many passages of the poem remain obscure and defy a shared understanding. The interpretation of the final lines (42-53) has frequently been a matter of passionate debate: some scholars believe they contain a curse against the man who deserted the woman; but they should rather be considered as a series of gnomic reflections on the need to endure distress and unhappiness with stoic resignation. The essay examines the structural and lexical features of the concluding lines of the poem, comparing them with analogues from other Old English texts; the final considerations show the coherence of those lines in relation to the poem as a whole

Le glosse “impoetiche” del testimone lipsiense del Heliand

The recent discovery of a new fragment of the Heliand (L), found at Leipzig in the binding of a volume, has aroused renewed interest in the Old Saxon poem. L (one sheet) contains lines 5823-5870 relevant to the most part of fit 69 and the beginning of the next one. This section of the Heliand was handed down so far only in the Cottonianus (C), as the Monacensis lacks the corresponding sheets. L contains also some readings, quite different from those of C, perhaps a proof that it retains a much older text than that of C. But the chief interest of L lies in the three vernacular glosses (written perhaps by the same hand of the main text), whose function was apparently to explain difficult or outdated words on the line

La tradizione gnomica nelle letterature germaniche medievali

Il volume raccoglie saggi dedicati alla tradizione gnomica nelle letterature germaniche medievali. Dopo un primo contributo che illustra i principali filoni della ricerca fraseologica e paremiologica, le trattazioni approfondiscono l’elemento didascalico affrontando questioni linguistiche, letterarie e socio-culturali in diversi generi testuali, alcuni orientati a contenuti gnomici, come indovinelli, codici giuridici, raccolte di massime e proverbi, altri di carattere epico, elegiaco o mistico. Gli studi toccano le aree di lingua inglese, tedesca, nederlandese e frisone, nei periodi antico e medio, con contatti e riferimenti anche all’area nordica. I numerosi microtesti gnomici mostrano una grande capacità di diffusione e penetrazione in diversi ambiti culturali, sia circolando singolarmente che inseriti in testi più ampi. Stilemi e contenuti ricorrono in tutte le aree linguistiche europee, evidenziando lo stretto legame fra il mondo germanico e la tradizione sapienziale classica e biblico-cristiana