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AnonymousThe Dream of the Rood
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Christianity and the Early Middle Ages in England
Fragments of the “Dream of the Rood” have been found on the Ruthwell Cross, an eighth-century stone cross hewn in Northumbria, now in Scotland. The larger poem was preserved in the 10th-century Vercelli manuscript, one of the oldest collections of poetry in Old English. Given its runic inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, it can be said “Dream of the Rood” was composed as early as the eighth century, which makes it one of the oldest poems in English.
“Dream of the Rood” is written in Old English, which is vastly different from its contemporary version. Old English is the language of the Anglo-Saxons of England. The Anglo-Saxons were groups of people who migrated from northern Europe to England during the fifth and sixth centuries. Many of them were from Germanic tribes, and Old English is considered a Germanic language close to Old German and Old Norse. The religion of the earliest Anglo-Saxons who came to England was possibly a type of Germanic “paganism,” polytheistic (i.e., with belief in many gods) in character.
Celtic-speaking people (from France, southern Germany, and central Europe) were already living in England since the first millennium BCE. Modern languages from England, such as Welsh and Scots, can trace their origins to the languages spoken by the Celtic people. The religion of the Celtic-speaking people was polytheistic, with animistic aspects, in that it believed nature and animals were imbued with spiritual power. Somewhere in the mix of Celtic-speaking and Anglo-Saxon beliefs was Christianity.
Historians largely agree that Christianity was brought to England as early as the first century AD via Roman traders. However, until the sixth, and possibly seventh, century, Christianity was a minor religious tradition in England. Things began to change by 595, when St. Augustine of Canterbury was sent to England by the Roman Catholic Church to convert King Æthelberht of Kent. After King Æthelberht converted to Christianity, he allowed the Roman Catholic missionaries to preach around Kent and granted them land for a monastery.
The patronage of the English king paved the way for Christianity to slowly go mainstream across England. Missionaries and evangelists of Christianity often coopted known religious symbols and “pagan” traditions to facilitate the uptake of the new religion among the people. For writers, such as the author or authors of “Dream of the Rood,” these images included Christ as a heroic warrior, the cross as a Tree of Life, and Christ’s table in heaven as a medieval hall. The poet’s passionate case for Christianity in “Dream of the Rood” shows that the religion was still spreading across England, yet to firmly take hold. Indeed, the advent of Christianity did not happen overnight in England, and was a gradual and fraught process over several centuries.
Literary Context: Dream-Visions and Anglo-Saxon Poetry
An early example of the medieval dream-vision, “Dream of the Rood” utilizes the genre’s conventions of supernatural authority and a story-within-a-story framing to convey its message of universal salvation. The “dream-vision” is a literary style common in medieval literature and has certain specific features, such as a prologue in which the speaker sets up the circumstances of the dream. This is followed by the description of the dream itself. Sometimes, as in the case of “Dream of the Rood,” a figure of authority appears in the dream and reveals important wisdom. The dream vision typically ends with the speaker awakening and sometimes summing up for the reader or listener the lessons learned in the dream.
Dreams were an effective narrative device in early and later medieval poetry because dreams were often seen as prophecies and omens. The ancient and medieval understanding of dreams was profoundly different from contemporary interpretations. Dreams were seen as a site for revelation and prophecy, rather than as a psychological phenomenon. In this sense, dreams were more like visions or hallucinations; hence, the term “dream-vision.” Another feature of the dream-vision is the prosopopoeia or personification, in which an inanimate object assumes human qualities and speaks out. The rood’s speech is an example of prosopopoeia.
Another convention of Anglo-Saxon poetry that can be glimpsed in “Dream of the Rood” is the riddle. In the riddle, a personified inanimate object describes itself to the reader. While riddles could be bawdy and humorous, they were often also used in religious and serious works. In “Dream of the Rood,” the speech of the cross has a distinctly riddle-like quality. The rood reveals itself, but wants the speaker to guess its larger nature. In the course of the poem, the many meanings attached to the cross are revealed.
Like almost all Anglo-Saxon poetry, “Dream of the Rood” is written in alliterative verse, a poetic style which focuses on alliteration rather than rhyme. For instance, note the repeated soft c (ch) sound in the opening lines: “What — most choice of dreams I choose/ to chatter” (Lines 1-2). The poem also uses several examples of consonance and assonance, where similar consonant and vowel sounds respectively are repeated close together. The stress on alliteration shows that the poetic style is meant to be read aloud or spoken, and has its roots in oral storytelling and bardic traditions. Further, Old English is a Germanic language, which naturally lends itself to alliteration (this feature carries over to contemporary English to a large extent as well).
Anglo-Saxon Poetry is the name contemporary scholars give to the body of literature composed in Old English between the mid-fifth century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. While there was no one monolithic Anglo-Saxon culture, many of the Anglo-Saxon groups who settled in England held values like loyalty and valor in high esteem, and shared an oral literary tradition of Germanic heroic sagas. The culture was highly social, with halls and banquet tables a common place of gathering. This cultural context greatly informs the heroic symbolism and the novel depiction of Christ in “Dream of the Rood.” While the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition was largely oral, it was rich nevertheless, including styles from heroic epics to poems to riddles to religious hymns and homilies.
Authorial Context: The Question of Authorship
For a long time, it was suggested that the author of the “Dream of the Rood” was Cynewulf, the eighth-century author of the long poem Elene. However, this is now considered an unproven attribution, as is the suggestion that the Anglo-Saxon poet Caedmon was the author behind “Dream of the Rood.” The authorship of the poem is lost, and like the seventh-century heroic narrative poem Beowulf, “Dream of the Rood” is now attributed to an unknown author or authors.
Cynewulf and Caedmon may have been suggested as sources because they are two of the very few names of authors that survive from the period in which Old English literature was written. While Old English literature was a rich tradition, very little of it was ultimately written down and managed to survive. All of the surviving literature is preserved in four manuscripts—known as Old English poetic codices—one of which is the Vercelli Book, in which “Dream of the Rood” is written. The Vercelli Book is a parchment document that dates to the late 10th century. It was discovered in 1822 in the Capitulary Library of Vercelli, northern Italy.
Though the Vercelli Book dates to the late 10th century, “Dream of the Rood,” or at least parts of it, date back to at least the early eighth century. Portions of it have been found carved as runic inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, an eighth-century stone monument. The 18-ft tall Anglo-Saxon cross is carved with vines, scenes from the New Treatment of the Bible, and religious symbols. On the sides of the carvings are the runes. The cross was broken during the Scottish Reformation of the 17th century, but has since been reconstructed and is now housed at Ruthwell church in Scotland. Since the Ruthwell Cross is regarded by some scholars as an early conversion tool—a sort of pulpit from which the early evangelists sought to preach Christianity—the date of the composition of “Dream of the Rood” is correspondingly located at that time.
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