Anonymous, Waldere

Paul Cavill (University of Nottingham)

Ed. by Hugh Magennis, Queen's University Belfast
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.01: English Writing and Culture: Old English, 500-1066.
Vol. editors: Richard William Dance (University of Cambridge), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 900 - c. 1000

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

There are two fragments of the Old English poem Waldere, discovered in the nineteenth century in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. The two leaves each consist of one whole page, across the fold of the manuscript, with just a little more than the margin of the second page. One or two letters of the each of the lines on the second page are all that is left, the rest having been cut off. The pages are not in good condition, and recent editors have used ultra-violet light to read some of the obscurer lines. The two fragments each record just over 30 lines of verse.

The Walter legend was popular in the Middle Ages and it is possible to reconstruct the story from tenth-century Latin, eleventh-century Italian, and thirteenth-…

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714 words

Citation: Cavill, Paul. "Waldere". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10537, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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