er more cautious one (Rieger, 313). He believed that the poem is an example of the collision of Christianity with the Anglo-Saxon folktale tradition. Friedrich Kluge later speculated that the poem is actually two speeches, and that the entirety of part B, having apparently no correlation to the first, was the later addition of a “mediocre homilist” (Kluge, 322). C. C. Ferrell, in agreement with Kluge, believed that the poem was essentially pagan in sentiment, but since Christian monks were usually the transcribers of these early poems, he believed that the Christian scribe who copied it down made additions. The most notable of which is the homiletic ending (Ferrell, 402). The first to attack the theory of multiple voices was William Lawrence in 1902. Lawrence believed that the poem is completely of one speaker. In his very influential article he examines the monologue theory which would prevail to the present day. Lawrence considers the poem "the lyric utterance of one man" (Lawrence, 462). Earlier critics, Lawrence claims, had divided the poem because of the interpretation of the word foron (The Seafarer, 33b) which connects the speaker's description of his suffering at sea and his desire to return to his seafaring. The word foron had previously been translated as "because," which suggests that the seafarer wishes to return to the sea because of his suffering there. From this apparent contradiction, the earlier critics had concluded that these were two different poems. Lawrence argues that foron does not necessarily need to be interpreted as "because," and suggests that the seafarer’s past suffering does not necessarily contradict his present longing.Another interesting theory comes from Gustav Ehrismann in 1909. Ehrissmann postulates, in agreement with Lawrence , that there is only one speaker, but that lines 1 through 64a are meant to be read as an allegory. He believed that the seafarer’s journey...
