“The Seafarer” is an Anglo-Saxon poem that illustrates the lavish burial rituals of its time. The poem is told from the point of view of a seafarer who reminisces about his life and sea and the path to heaven. The poem is also very much about death and the Anglo-Saxon rituals that go along with death. The speaker describes the spiritual life after death and then in lines 97-102, the heathen is described of how people in the Anglo-Saxon period were buried in a very lavish way, with jewels and that the treasure is then taken into the context world; “Though he would strew the grave with gold, a brother for his kinsman, bury with the dead, a mass of treasure”. This culture depicted in “the Seafarer” completely contradicts Greek culture. In Greek culture, burials were less focused on class ranking and proper burials were performed for all persons. The Greeks would lay out the body on a funeral pit and burn the body. Also in Greek culture, the relationship between God was formed by sacrificial rituals, whereas Anglo-Saxon religion is connected with the divine by believing that one must live an honorable life in order to have a good path to heaven determined by God.
I love your insight on the lavish and jewel filled burials of the Anglo-Saxons but I believe you may be flawed in the beliefs of the Greek Society on Burials. The synthesis question prompt states, "the ancient Greeks required burial in the ground and no desecration of the body, the Anglo-Saxons adhered to a more 'heathen' approach of burning the body on a funeral pyre." When you state that the greeks "would lay out the body on a funeral pit and burn the body" I question either your source for that data or you interpretation of the source. besides the raw points found in the seafarer, I would like to reflect on the way you wrote the paragraph. You are very repetitive and focus on describing the rituals with only on source. Next time elaborate on pure sources from the text after you state the text.
ReplyDelete