Conclusion - The Rhyming Poem

Summary

Summarising this study’s findings, this concluding chapter explores a little-discussed and much-maligned text in their light: the relatively late, formally innovative, and greatly enigmatic Rhyming Poem of the Exeter Book. This poem is known for its apparently disorganised structure and ambiguous subject matter, moving rapidly between human and nonhuman referents, and operating on both a microcosmic and macrocosmic level. Yet The Rhyming Poem gains a great deal of clarity when approached as an articulation of a human life course, blurring with that of the world itself. Drawing on arguments built throughout the book, this final chapter sets out a new account of the poem, finding more coherence to its structure than scholars have previously detected, and pointing particularly to key connections between form and content in the poet’s bold use of rhyme to accentuate the sudden shifts and transformations of the life course.