The Dream of the Rood

The purpose of this research is to examine The Dream of the Rood, an anonymous poem in Old English variously thought to have been composed in the eighth, ninth, or tenth centuries. The history of the poem's thematic and rhetorical development has been charted according to three major lines: the mingling of Germanic and Christian influences for the production of narrative form and content, the heroic tradition prevalent in the English culture at the time the poem was composed, and doctrinal influences on the content of the poem. These lines are not mutually exclusive, but they illustrate how the poem has been analyzed.

The influence of both Germanic and Christian culture on The Dream of the Rood has been noted by Diamond, who says that the heroic quality of Christ as described by the Rood in the poem is a motif of central European literary traditions that has been turned on its head. "Our poet seems to have reversed the softening tendency which so often creeps into heroic poetry: for example, in the Serbian heroic song of the Battle of Kossovo, the hero rejects an earthly kingdom in favor of the heavenly kingdom" (Diamond 4). The through line of action in The Dream of the Rood, however, is a description of Christ as a hero, which "displays in some passages a seemingly atavistic reversion to the heroic spirit" (Diamond 4). Diamond attributes this tendency in The Dream of the Rood to the probability that the author composed the poem pursuant to the phenomenon of the

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several commentators have noted the characterization of Christ as a hero, citing as evidence the imagery surrounding the actions that the Rood describes. Citing Schlauch's description of The Dream of the Rood as a poetic instance of Ovidian rhetoric, Cherniss suggests that "vernacular heroic poetry," particularly that deriving from Germanic literary tradition, offers an equally valid explanation of the tone of the poem. Such tradition accounts for the fact that "the idea of the warriorChrist coalesced in the poet's mind with certain habits of thought and diction inherent in this tradition" (Cherniss 242). Cherniss notes the linguistic echoes of Beowulf found in The Dream of the Rood, particularly the personification and decoration of weapons in Beowulf and the personification and decoration of the Rood; he acknowledges that whether this was a literary device or a conscious employment of the Viking heroic tradition is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the heroic literary tradition was well in place in AngloSaxon (preNorman) England at the time The Dream of the Rood was composed, and the personification of the Rood as decorative symbol and weapon would have been perfectly consistent with the "quasipersonalization"

Category: Literature - T