The Dream of the Rood - Howard R. Patch (essay date 1919)
Howard R. Patch (essay date 1919)
SOURCE: "Liturgical Influence in The Dream of the Rood," in PMLA, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, 1919, pp. 233-57.
[In the following essay, Patch explores parallels between The Dream of the Rood and church liturgical texts "in order to gain a further knowledge of the poet's working method and to assist in reproducing a sense of the connotativeness of the poem."]
Scholars have long made an earnest search for analogues to The Dream of the Rood,but the very remoteness of the parallels thus afforded so far is a unique testimony to the high degree of originality in the poem. Closer in some ways than any of them, in that it gives us a dialogue with the cross, the "Disputation between Mary and the Cross" might have been cited; but here again comparison shows that the Dream is a poem standing apart in the unusually fine quality of its inspiration and in its genuine feeling. The poet...
[The entire page is 5706 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
