Nineteenth-century scholars generally felt that the Exeter Book riddle collection was a unified whole under the authorship of Cynewulf, or that it was made up of two major parts, Riddles "1" (now known as "Wul'f and Eadwacer") to 59 and 61-95. Most scholars since the first decade of this century, however, have viewed the riddles as a miscellany, with a few individual riddles perhaps sharing common authorship, but with no overall unity or organization in the collection as a whole. If the riddles are examined in terms of their point of view (I am..., I saw..., There is...), a distinct pattern emerges which demonstrates Riddles 61-95 to be separate from the rest, and which also divides Riddles 1-59 into two more or less equal groups. The distribution of point of view does not indicate the exact point of division between the first two groups, but if the groups originally comprised 60 riddles (like the collection of Eusebius), and if the two groups are assumed to have been equal collections of 30, then deduction based on the amount of missing material due to the loss of folios between fols. 105 and 106, and between 111 and 112, would locate the break between Riddles 29 and 30. Riddle 30b, then, could have been simply a mis-start of the second group at a point later in the MS. Examination of the distribution of opening and closing formulas arid of the adverbs hwilum, oft and nu over the collection supports the three-part theory. Stylistic diversity in the third group, from crude riddles like Nos. 75 and 76 to the fine 'horn' and 'water' riddles suggests that this group is a miscellany containing the work of a number of authors. Connections between riddles of this group and the two earlier ones appear to indicate some sort of dependence of these on riddles of the first two groups. The relationship in several of the cases can be explained as imitation or modelling of the later riddles on earlier ones. Such a suggestion is not inconsistent with practice at the time, as other riddles of the period appear to have been used as exercises in grammar. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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The Wife 's Lament from the Exeter Book has attracted much notice and speculation due to its mysterious origin and its narrator, who represents one of the few female voices surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period. Many scholars speculate that this work is related to The Husband's Message, another piece of equal length and similar subject matter from the same codex. I propose that the two works were originally symmetrical halves to a single work, in the form of a complaint and reply designed to represent the biblical metaphor of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Extensive parallels to biblical writings as well as to medieval theology suggest that the Wife of The Wife's Lament was intended to personify the voice of the waiting Church between Christ's ascension and his apocalyptic return. Similarly, The Husband's Message seems to embody Christ's promise of return and of the coming of the Kingdom of God: words of encouragement to the Church in her suffering. These voices echo the allegory of Christ the Bridegroom found throughout the Old and New Testaments, especially (in the medieval conception) in the Song of Songs, and provide a context in which the structural similarities of the works become more persuasive. Finally, I postulate that the form of the original work derives from remnants of the ancient Scandinavian cult of Freyja still resident in the cultural consciousness of Anglo-Saxon society even after the conversion to Christianity. In comparing the two stories it can be seen that the Wife's tone of lament echoes the mourning of Freyja at Freyr's seasonal death, and the voice of the Husband recalls Freyr's seasonal return with the spring. With evidence of form, purpose, and context, the argument for original unity accounts for the many mysterious elements in the two works.

While many riddles exist in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book containing female characters, both as actual human females and personified objects and aspects of nature, few scholars have discussed how the anthropomorphized “females” of the riddles challenge and broaden more conventional portrayals of what it meant to be “female” in Anglo-Saxon literature. True understanding of these riddles, however, comes only with this broader view of female, a view including a mixture of ferocity and nobility of purpose and character very reminiscent of the valkyrie (OE wælcyrige), a figure mentioned only slightly in Anglo-Saxon literature, but one who deserves more prominence, particularly when evaluating the riddles of the Exeter Book and two poems textually close to the riddles, The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, the only two poems with a female voice in the entire Old English corpus. Riddles represent culture from a unique angle. Because of their heavy dependence upon metaphor as a vehicle or disguise for the true subject of the riddle, the poet must employ a metaphor with similar characteristics to the true riddle subject, or the tenor of the riddle. As the riddle progresses, similarities between the vehicle and the tenor are listed for the reader. Within these similarities lie the common ground between the two objects, but the riddle changes course at some point and presents a characteristic the vehicle and tenor do not have in common, which creates a gap. This gap of similarities must be wide enough for the true solution to appear, but not so wide so that the reader cannot hope to solve the mental puzzle. Because many of the riddles of the Exeter Book involve women and portrayal of objects as “female,” it is important to analyze the use of “female” as a vehicle to see what similarities arise.