Ubi sunt

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Ubi Sunt (literally "where are...") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?"

Ubi Sunt is a phrase that begins several Latin medieval poems. It refers to the tone of the poem, and can even be used to indicate the tone of another work, such as Beowulf.

Sometimes considered to be a nostalgic longing for the clichéd "good old days", the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience. The medieval French poet, Francois Villon, famously echoes the sentiment in the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis (Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past) with his question "Où sont les neiges d'antan?" or "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" The Spanish poet, Jorge Manrique, likewise wrote some equally famous stanzas about contemporaries that had death had taken away.

A general feeling of Ubi Sunt radiates from the text of Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxons, at the point in their cultural evolution in which Beowulf was written, experienced an inescapable feeling of doom, symptomatic of Ubi Sunt yearning.

Other prominent Ubi Sunt Anglo-Saxon poems are The Wanderer, The Ruin, and The Seafarer (all part of a collection called The Exeter Book, the largest surviving collection of Old English literature). The Wanderer most exemplifies Ubi sunt poetry in its use of erotema (the rhetorical question):

"Where has the horse gone? Where the young warrior? Where is the giver of treasure? What has become of the feasting seats? Where are the joys of the hall?"

The Wanderer is considered to be an elegiac poem.

Ubi sunt

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