<P> "The Wife's Lament" or "The Wife's Complaint" is an Old English poem of 53 lines found in the Exeter Book and generally treated as an elegy in the manner of the German frauenlied, or woman's song . The poem has been relatively well - preserved and requires few if any emendations to enable an initial reading . Thematically, the poem is primarily concerned with the evocation of the grief of the female speaker and with the representation of her state of despair . The tribulations she suffers leading to her state of lamentation, however, are cryptically described and have been subject to many interpretations . Indeed, Professor Stephen Ramsay has said, "the' correct' interpretation of "The Wife's Lament" is one of the more hotly debated subjects in medieval studies ." </P> <P> Though the description of the text as a woman's song or frauenlied--lamenting for a lost or absent lover--is the dominant understanding of the poem, the text has nevertheless been subject to a variety of distinct treatments that fundamentally disagree with this view and propose alternatives . One such treatment considers the poem to be allegory, in which interpretation the lamenting speaker represents the Church as Bride of Christ or as an otherwise feminine allegorical figure . Another dissenting interpretation holds that the speaker, who describes herself held within an old earth cell (eald is þes eorðsele) beneath an oak tree (under actreo), may indeed literally be located in a cell under the earth, and would therefore constitute a voice of the deceased, speaking from beyond the grave . Both the interpretations, as with most alternatives, face difficulties, particularly in the latter case, for which no analogous texts exist in the Old English corpus . </P>

What is the meaning of the poem the wife's lament