Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Alain Renoir. "A Reading Context for The Wife's Lament." In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores W. Frese. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 224-41.

Postulates and illustrates a Germanic tradition of suffering women, within which he would place the Lament. Though positing no genetic relationship, he feels that this context "alerts us to certain circumstances, attitudes, and verbal formulas readily associated with the secular women of early Germanic poetry" (p. 240).
Area: OE, CP