Morcom, Thomas; (2022) Crying Out for Two Lords: Sex and Supplication in Wulf and Eadwacer. Leeds Medieval Studies , 2 pp. 1-18. 10.57686/256204/17.

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Abstract

This article provides a significant reinterpretation of Wulf and Eadwacer, departing from a new understanding of the function of the word eadwacer as an apt compound to refer to the Christian God. This is demonstrated through a survey of compounds that take ead-as their first element elsewhere in the Old English corpus, alongside a discussion of the possible pastoral implications of wacer. The concluding lines of the poem can, consequently, be understood more positively as a prayer of supplication on the part of the speaker, who repudiates her wretched relationship with the inconstant Wulf in favour of intimacy with God, providing the poem with a moment of consolation at its close, as is typical of the Old English elegies more generally. The article concludes with an extrapolation of the argument advanced up this point, in testing this soteriological reading’s productivity in relation to Wulf and Eadwacer’s ambiguous opening lines.

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