The Dream of the Rood | John V. Fleming (essay date 1966)
John V. Fleming (essay date 1966)
SOURCE: "The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism," in Traditio, Vol. XXII, 1966, pp. 43-72.
[Below, Fleming examines the characters, language, and themes of The Dream of the Rood, calling the poem "a carved celebration of the monastic ideals" of English Benedictinism.]
The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved around the edges of a North English high cross now at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire. It represents no more than a fragment of the text as we find it in the Vercelli MS, a short passage describing the Crucifixion and the ordeal of the Cross. The precise relationship between the Ruthwell runes and the Vercelli poem is a matter of conjecture and dispute. To some critics the Ruthwell inscriptions represent an 'earlier poem,' of which the Vercelli text is an expansion or a later revision or both. It is a question to...
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