The Dream of the Rood | Charles W. Kennedy (essay date 1943)
Charles W. Kennedy (essay date 1943)
SOURCE: "Poetry in the Cynewulfian Manner," in The Earliest English Poetry: A Critical Survey, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1943, pp. 235-66.
[In the following excerpt, Kennedy discusses glorification of the Cross in The Dream of the Rood, attributing to the poem 'pre-eminent distinction as a superb lyric presentation of a religious adoration which finds its symbol in the Cross. '
In three Old English poems veneration of the Cross receives stressed and memorable expression: the Elene, Christ III, and Dream of the Rood. Of these, Christ III and the Dream have most in common both in spirit and detail. Cynewulf 's Elene … is a narrative of the Invention of the Cross, which attains its greatest poetic distinction in two incidental passages, the descriptions of Constantine's battle against the Huns, and Elene's sea-journey. In the lines which...
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