True Confessions: The Seafarer and Technologies of the Sylf

Michael Matto, Adelphi University

What does the narrator of the Old English poem The Seafarer mean when he declares his intention to tell a sodgied, or "true story," about his sylf? Criticism on The Seafarer has long focused on the question of the sylf, particularly in regards to the number of "selves" doing the telling. Though nineteenth-century scholars were the first to suggest multiple narrative voices in the poem, John C. Pope and Stanley Greenfield were largely responsible for sustaining discussion of the issue in the modern era. Their sixteen-year, four-article public debate focused attention not on line 1, but on the problematic appearance of the word sylf in line 35b: