Dream of the rood-2

Personifying an inanimate object is typical of the medieval tradition in which swords, mead and the like are personified in riddles. Riddles were typically told in the mead hall as entertainment for the thanes. By using the cross as a narrator, the poet uses a common medieval technique that would help to appease and entertain the audience.In addition to the cross’s warrior-like description, he also possesses another Anglo-Saxon quality. He possesses the ability to boast. The author personified the cross itself to speak about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

As “The Dream of the Rood’s” many deviations from the biblical account of the crucifixion suggest, the image of Christ in the Middle Ages emphasized the salvation Christ brought to mankind by presenting him as a triumphant warrior over sin.

The depiction of Christ receiving a Beowulf-type burial rather than the type of burial recorded in the gospels shows how the image of Christ in the Middle Ages had been adapted from the image of Christ recorded in the gospels. Rather than presenting Christ as a lamb or a passive participant in the universal plan for redemption, the poet presents Christ as a martyred hero, an image that reflects the preeminent values of the early medieval society.

The appearance of the cross and the way in which the cross’s experiences are told are strikingly different from traditional Christian ideas. Instead, the description in the poem is rather Anglo-Saxon.In the Christian tradition that preaches humility and deemphasizes riches, this description of the cross does not seem to fit. To the mind of the Anglo-Saxon on the other hand, this would sound appealing. Blood, arrows, gashes, treasure, and gold would all spark an interest to the Anglo-Saxon culture.

The poem creates a warrior-like Lamb of God and a strongly medieval afterlife.Although the ideas of humility and selflessness may not fit neatly into Anglo-Saxon society, this poem finds a way to convince the audience of Christian values.

A dream vision or visio is a literary device in which a dream or vision is recounted as having revealed knowledge or a truth that is not available to the dreamer or visionary in a normal waking state. Anonymous, The Dream of the Rood – the guide in Dream of the Rood is the Cross on which Christ was crucified. This genre typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts his experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking, and the story is often an allegory. The dream, which forms the subject of the poem, is prompted by events in his waking life that are referred to early in the poem.  In the course of the dream, the narrator, often with the aid of a guide, is offered perspectives that provide potential resolutions to his waking concerns.The Dream of the Rood has three parts: the Dreamer’s account of his vision of the Cross, the Rood’s monologue describing the Crucifixion, and the Dreamer’s resolution to seek the salvation of the Cross.In the end, the Dreamer is renewed with hope and vows to seek again the glorious Rood. The dream-vision convention was widely used in European literature from late Latin times until the 15th century. The dream vision uses strong, virile images of Christ in order to reach members of the Anglo-Saxon warrior culture, who valued strength above humility. This may have been a deliberate strategy to convert pagans to Christianity.

The Dream of the Rood draws with astonishing creativity at the secular heroic ethos.

“The Dream of the Cross” has been called “one of the great religious poems of the English language,” the finest dream-allegory in Anglo-Saxon as well as one of the earliest extant versions of the medieval dream-vision, and hailed as a portrayal of Christ “as a truly heroic Germanic warrior with his disciples as his loyal comitatus.’

“The Dream of the Cross” is therefore a powerful argument for the spiritual qualities of honor, truth, and courage which marked the Anglo-Saxon mind before Christianity and the spiritual qualities of mercy, justice, and love after Christianity had spread. Cross has faith & is like a thane.

The Dream of the Rood also provides a valuable window into early Christian Anglo-Saxon England/Britain.

Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse.  Preserved in the 10th century Vercelli Book discovered, in 1822, northern Italy the poem may be as old as the 8th century Ruthwell Cross, a large stone carving dating to the early eighth century. Eighteen verses of The Dream of the Rood were carved into the cross in runic lettering and it is considered one of the oldest works of Old English literature.

The Dream of the Rood and the gospel tales of the crucifixion are separated not only by time, but by culture, language and depiction of the nature of Christ. The most obvious difference is that it is told from the POV of the cross whilst the biblical gospels are described by the apostles. In spite of this, there are clear parallels between the 2 accounts of crucifixion – both detail Christ’s death as a triumph of good over evil and redemption of mankind as a positive. Thus, these accounts follow the same event, but employ widely different methods of narration to explore greater themes.