Dream of the Rood

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The Dream of the Rood is one of the earliest Christian poems in the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature and an intriguing example of the genre of dream poetry. Like all Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. Rood is from the Anglo-Saxon rod "pole", specifically "crucifix". Preserved in the 10th century Vercelli Book, the poem may be considerably older, even one of the oldest works of Old English literature.

Contents

[edit] The poem

Dream of the Rood is a poem told by a dreamer who dreamt of talking with the cross upon which Christ was crucified. The poem is divided into three sections. Section one concerns the dreamer's vision of the cross. This is important because the idea of the cross and Christ being portrayed to the reader by a dreamer sets the structure of the poem in what was known in Old English literature as dream poetry/theory (Galloway, 1), in which the reader is being told the dreamer's dream as if it were real. This section goes on to describe how the dreamer envisions the cross being raised up in triumph, covered in gold and jewels. Yet the dreamer is startled by the sight of blood on the adorned cross. Section two is the cross speaking to the dreamer about the crucifixion of Christ. Adelhied L. J. Thieme, in his "Gift Giving as a Vital Element of Salvation in the Dream of the Rood," remarks, "The cross itself is portrayed as his lord's retainer whose most outstanding characteristic is that of unwaivering loyalty (108.)" Here the cross retells the story of how it would only do according to the will of Christ, and how it was cut down by his "enemies" and fashioned into the crucifix upon which Christ would die. The Rood and Christ become one in the portrayal of the Passion—they are both pierced with nails, mocked and tortured. Soon after, like Christ, the Cross is resurrected, then adorned with gold and silver (Galloway, 1.) In section three the cross commands the dreamer to go out and spread the message of Christ's suffering and redemption. The poem ends with the dreamer stating how he feels he has been converted to a better life and hopes to convert those he knows who are not living a life of Christ and the cross.

[edit] Paganism vs. Christianity

Dream of the Rood is heavily laden with references to pagan culture. For instance the dreamer (most likely a pagan at the beginning of the dream) recalls the cross telling him about the crucifixion as if it were a battle. Additionally, the poem presents Christ as a "heroic warrior, eagerly leaping on the Cross to do a battle with death; the Cross is a loyal retainer who is painfully and paradoxically forced to participate in his lord's execution (Black, 23.)" Christ can also be seen as "an Anglo-Saxon warrior lord, who is served by his thanes, especially on the cross and who rewards them at the feast of glory in Heaven" (Dockray-Miller, 3.) Thus, the crucifixion of Christ is a victory because Christ could have fought his enemies, but he chose to die on the cross. John Canuteson believes that the poem "show[s] Christ's willingness, indeed his eagerness, to embrace his fate, [and] it also reveals the physical details of what happens to a man, rather than a god, on the Cross" (296.) Besides this image of Christ as a warrior king, the very idea of a talking tree is incredibly animistic, referring to the way in which pagan elements incorporate spirits and other fantastical elements of nature. Paganism puts a great emphasis on the spiritual elements that embody various things in Mother Nature. Specifically in the poem, this belief that natural objects possess a spirit or spiritual elements urges the reader recognize the tree as an object of worship. In his text, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, Richard North stresses the importance of the sacrifice of the tree in accordance with Pagan virtues. He states that "the image of Christ's death was constructed in this poem with reference to an Anglian myth on the world tree (North, 273.) Additionally, North suggests that the author of Dream of the Rood "uses the language of this myth of Ingui in order to present the Passion to his newly Christianized countrymen as a story from their native tradition" (273.) Furthermore, the tree's triumph over death is celebrated by adorning the cross with gold and jewels, in a way worshiping the tree as if it were an idol, remembering the days of pagan's faith in idolatry. Despite these strong pagan elements, the very nature of The Dream of the Rood is based upon Christian belief. The entire poem deals with the passion, death and resurrection of Christ acting as a triumph over sin and evil. The strongest mark of Christian faith is when the dreamer, in his converted state, remarks, "May the Lord be my friend/ he who here on Earth once suffered/ on the hanging tree for human sin/ he ransomed us and gave us life/ a heavenly home." Here the dreamer realizes that Christ's death was not some victory in battle, but was in fact a way in which human salvation was secured.

[edit] Interpretation

One common interpretation amongst scholars is that the Cross in Dream of the Rood possesses feminine entities. For example, Mary Dockray-Miller has asserted that the Cross is feminine, and shares a close, almost sexual relationship with the ultra-masculine Christ. She argues that "the performances of Christ in the text of The Dream of the Rood construct a masculinity for Christ that is majestic, martial, and specifically heterosexual and that relies on a fragile opposition with a femininity defined as dominated Other" (2.) The fact that the Cross asserts that the Romans tortured "unc butu ætgædere" (us both, together) would suggest a close personal relationship between the Cross and Christ. The poem concludes with the poet's prayer to the Rood that he might enter into the band of Christ's followers. In John Canuteson's text, The Crucifixion and the Second Coming, he interprets the cross to be "angry and afraid-- it wants to fell Christ's enemies, and it shakes when Christ mounts it-- but in everything it exhibits a feminine submission" (295). Further along in his text, Canteson states that the personality of the Cross may be compared to that of the Virgin Mary. The Cross' passive nature toward the will of God further resembles feminine behavior (Canuteson, 294.)

[edit] The Ruthwell Cross inscription

The Ruthwell Cross is an 18 foot, free standing, Anglo Saxon Cross, generally dated to the 7th century, perhaps intended as a "conversion tool" (Schapiro 1944). At each side of the vine-tracery the runes are carved. The runes were first described around 1600, and Reginald Bainbrigg of Appleby recorded the inscription for the Britannia of William Camden. Around 1832, the runes were recognized as different from the Scandinavian futhark (viz., they are to be categorized as Anglo-Saxon futhorc) by Thorleif Repp, by reference to the Exeter Book. His rendition referred to a place called the vale of Ashlafr, compensation for injury, a font and a monastery of Therfuse.

John Mitchell Kemble in 1840 advanced a reading referring to Mary Magdalene. The better known Dream of the Rood reading,

ᛣᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᚹᚫᛋ ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ ᚻᚹᛖᚦᚱᚨ / ᚦᛖᚱ ᚠᚳᛋᚨ ᚠᛠᚱᚱᚪᚾ ᛣᚹᚩᛗᚳ / ᚨᚦᚦᛁᛚᚨ ᛏᛁᛚ ᚪᚾᚢᛗ
Krist wæs on rodi. Hweþræ'/ þer fusæ fearran kwomu / æþþilæ til anum.
"Christ was on the cross. Yet / the brave came there from afar / to their lord."

is due to a revised reading of Kemble's in an 1842 article. Kemble's revised reading is based on the poem of the Vercelli Book, to the extent that missing words in each are supplied from the other. Its authenticity is disputed and may be a conjecture inserted by Kemple himself: O'Neill (2005)[1] notes Kemble's "almost pathological dislike of Scandinavian interference in what he sees as the English domain". Kemble himself notes how the inscription may be "corrected" with the help of the Vercelli Book.

The 12th century Brussels Cross bears a similar inscription,

Rod is min nama; geo ic ricne Cyning bær byfigynde, blod bestemed
"Rood is my name. Trembling once, I bore a powerful king, made wet with blood"

[edit] Possible Authorship

To this day the authorship of Dream of the Rood remains unknown; however with the Ruthwell Cross giving the poem a rough time period in which it could have been written, scholars have been able to make educated suggestions on possible authors. Two of the most heavily argued, for probable authorship, are the Anglo-Saxon Christian poets Caedmon and Cynewulf.

What scholars know of Caedmon's life come from Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People". He is known best during the time fl. 658-680a.d., and Bede tells us that he was an illiterate herdsman to a monastery who one night in a dream learned how to sing beautiful Christian verses praising God's name. Ever since his dream, Caedmon became the foremost Christian poet who led the way for others such as Bede and Cynewulf (Hunter 2). An Old English scholar, as well as noted commentator on the Ruthwell Cross, Daniel H. Haigh argues that the inscription of the Ruthwell Cross must be fragments of one of Caedmon's lost poems. Haigh brings up this idea, stating, "On this monument, erected about A.D. 665, we have fragments of a religious poem of very high character, and that there was but one man living in England at that time worthy to be named as a religious poet, and that was Caedmon" (Cook, 6). Another runic scholar, George Stephens contends that the very language and structure of the verses in Dream of the Rood could only have come from the 7th century and a time before Bede. Considering that the only Christian poet before Bede was Caedmon, Stephens makes the point that there could have been no one else during this time period or living in the same area that could have authored the poem other than Caedmon. Furthermore, Stephens claims that there is a runic inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, that when translated, comes to mean "Caedmon made me" (Cook, 7). Despite this evidence most scholars reject the Haigh and Stephens assertion that there is in fact such an inscription.

Cynewulf lived roughly c. 770-840 AD yet very little is known about his life (Krstovic). The only information scholars have on Cynewulf's life is what they can discover from his poetry. Two of Cynewulf's signed poems were discovered in what is known as the Vercelli Book, an ancient Anglo-Saxon manuscript containing 23 homelitic poems including Cynewulf's holy cross poem "Elene" as well as Dream of the Rood (Drabble 2). Where many scholars will argue that all of the poems in the Vercelli are in fact Cynewulf's, the noted German scholar Franz Dietrich demonstrates that the similarities between Cynewulf's "Elene" and The Dream of the Rood reveals that the two must have been authored by the same individual. Dietrich makes four main arguments: one, the theme of both poems is the cross, and more importantly, in both poems, the cross suffers with Christ; two, in "Elene" Cynewulf seems to make clear references to the same cross in Dream of the Rood; three, in "Elene" and his other poems Cynewulf usually speaks of himself, which makes it quite possible that the dreamer in Dream of the Rood is non other than Cynewulf himself; and finally four, "In both poems the author represents himself as old, having lost joys or friends and as ready to depart (Cook, 12-13).

[edit] Works Cited

Black, Joseph ed., Supplement to Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Broadview Press, 2007.

Blair, Hunter. The World of Bede. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970. Sep 27, 2007 http://www.heorot.dk/bede-caedmon-i-txt.html

Canuteson, John. "The Crucifixion and Second Coming of Christ." Modern Philology, Vol. 66, No. 4, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Marathon Campus. May 1969, pp 293-297.

Cook, Albert S., ed. The Dream of the Rood: An Old English Poem Attributed to Cynewulf. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Sep 27, 2007

Dockray-Miller, Mary. "The Feminized Cross of 'The Dream of the Rood.'" Philogical Quarterly, Vol 76. 1997, pp 1 and 3.

Drabble, Margaret. ed. "The Vercelli Book: Introduction." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. 5th Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Sep 27, 2007. http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/anthology/oldenglish/vercelliintro.html

Galloway, Andrew. "Dream-Theory in the Dream of the Rood and the Wanderer" Oxford University Press Vol. XLV, No. 180, 1994. http://www.jstor.org/view/00346551/ap020283/02a00020/0

Krstovic, Jelena. ed. "The Dream of the Rood: Introduction." Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Vol 14. Gale Group, Inc., 1995. enotes.com. 2006. Sep 27, 2007 <http://www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/dream-rood>

North, Richard. Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 273.

Schapiro, Meyer. "The Religious Meaning of the Ruthwell Cross." The Art Bulletin. Vol 26. No 4. New York: College Art Association, 1944. Sep 27, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/view/00043079/sp020124/02x1844x/0

Thieme, Adelhied L. J. "Gift Giving as a Vital Element of Salvation in the Dream of the Rood" South Atlantic Review, 1998. http://www.jstor.org/view/0277335x/sp040071/04x2191g/0

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ O'Neill, Pamela, 'A pillar curiously engraven; with some inscriptions upon it': What is the Ruthwell Cross? (British Archaeological Reports British Series, 397), Oxford, Archaeopress, 2005, ISBN 1-84171-867-X.

[edit] External links