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Stylistic disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Carol Braun Pasternack
Carol Braun Pasternack
Affiliation:
The University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The stylistic disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood are not a new topic. They have been treated explicitly and implicitly for many years from several different points of view. The most frequently noted disjunction occurs at line 78 where the cross, having completed its eye-witness account of the crucifixion, commences a homily explaining the significance of its experience. But there are others as well: at 27 where the poet switches personae from dreamer to cross, at 121 where the dreamer again becomes the speaker to describe his personal reaction to his vision and at 147 where the poet begins an impersonal magnification of Christ which concludes the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 13 , December 1984 , pp. 167 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 The Dream of the Rood: an Old English Poem Attributed to Cynewulf, ed. Cook, Albert S. (Oxford, 1905), pp. liv–lv.Google Scholar

2 The Dream of the Rood, ed. Dickins, Bruce and Ross, Alan S. C. (London, 1934), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

3 ‘Doctrinal Influences on The Dream of the Rood’, MÆ 27 (1958), 153.Google Scholar

4 Fleming, John V., ‘The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, Traditio 22 (1966), 43–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burrow, John A., ‘An Approach to The Dream of the Rood’, Neophilologus 43 (1959), 123–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burlin, Robert B., ‘The Ruthwell Cross, The Dream of the Rood and the Vita Contemplativa’, SP 65 (1968), 23–43Google Scholar; and Lee, N. A., ‘The Unity of The Dream of the Rood’, Neophilologus 56 (1972), 469–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Others include Leiter, Louis H., ‘The Dream of the Rood: Patterns of Transformation’, Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Creed, Robert P. (Providence, RI, 1967), pp. 93–127Google Scholar; Patten, Faith H., ‘Structure and Meaning in The Dream of the Rood’, ES 49 (1968), 385–401Google Scholar; and Macrae-Gibson, O. D., ‘Christ the Victor-Vanquished in The Dream of the Rood’, NM 70 (1969), 667–72.Google Scholar

5 ‘Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, p. 55.

6 ‘The Vita Contemplativa’, p. 33, and ‘The Unity’, p. 467.

7 Constance Hieatt, B., ‘Dream Frame and Verbal Echo in the Dream of the Rood’, NM 72 (1971), 251–63Google Scholar, and Kintgen, Eugene, ‘Echoic Repetition in Old English Poetry, especially The Dream of the Rood’, NM 75 (1974), 202–3.Google Scholar

8 ‘The Vita Contemplativa’, p. 27.

9 ‘Dream Frame and Verbal Echo’, pp. 254–5.

10 Ibid. p. 258.

11 Webster's Third New International Dictionary, s.v.

12 Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Trask, Willard R. (Princeton, NJ, 1953), p. 74.Google Scholar

13 In addition to Kintgen, ‘Echoic Repetition’, and Hieatt, ‘Dream Frame and Verbal Echo’, see Greenfield, Stanley B., ‘The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of “Exile” in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, Speculum 30 (1955), 200–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Renoir, Alain, ‘Oral Theme and Written Texts’, NM 77 (1976), 337–46Google Scholar; Crowne, David K., ‘The Hero on the Beach: an Example of Composition by Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, NM 61 (1960), 362–72Google Scholar; Fry, Donald K., ‘Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes’, Neophilologus 52 (1968), 48–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Old English Formulas and Systems’, ES 48 (1967), 193–204Google Scholar, and ‘Some Aesthetic Implications of a New Definition of Formula’, NM 69 (1968), 516–22Google Scholar; and Quirk, Randolph, ‘Poetic Language and Old English Metre’, Early English and Norse Studies presented to Hugh Smith, ed. Brown, Arthur and Foote, Peter (London, 1963), pp. 150–71Google Scholar, repr. Quirk, Randolph, Essays on the English Language: Medieval and Modern (London, 1968), pp. 1–19.Google Scholar

14 Gardner, Faith F., An Analysis of Syntactic Patterns of Old English (The Hague, 1971)Google Scholar, demonstrates that ‘the English language of Ælfric's time and even of Alfred's relied far less upon inflections to communicate its meanings than grammarians have thought. Even in the early Old English period, case endings were becoming redundant and position was becoming the governing syntactical factor’ (p. 77); and Mitchell, Bruce, ‘Syntax’, Mitchell, Bruce and Robinson, Fred C., A Guide to Old English, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1982), pp. 58–117.Google Scholar

15 Mitchell, Bruce, ‘Some Syntactical Problems in The Wanderer’, NM 69 (1968), 172–98Google Scholar, and ‘Linguistic Facts and the Interpretation of Old English Poetry’, ASE 4 (1975), 11–28.Google Scholar

16 Greenfield, Stanley B., ‘Verse Form, Syntax and Meaning’, The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London, 1972), pp. 109–32Google Scholar; ‘Grammar and Meaning in Poetry’, PMLA 82 (1967), 377–87; and ‘Syntactic Analysis and Old English Poetry’, NM 64 (1963), 373–8Google Scholar, among others.

17 Huppé, Bernard F., The Web of Words (Albany, NY, 1970)Google Scholar also divides the poem into sections by examination of syntax. He studies the poem's syntax by focusing on the sequence of sentences (verse paragraphs, periods and ‘clausules’). Because his focus is so confined, however, he never makes summary or general evaluative statements but proceeds sentence by sentence, noting the beginning and end, chiasmus, balance, repetition of sound or word. As one would expect, then, he does not notice the stylistic shifts.

18 I use the text of The Vercelli Book, ed. Krapp, George Philip, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2 (New York, 1932), 61–5Google Scholar, but I occasionally alter the punctuation in accordance with my judgement on the dominant syntax patterns. See Huppé, The Web of Words, for another system.

19 For other interpretations of how these repeated verbs of seeing and beholding structure the poem, see Huppé, esp. pp. 77–85, and Kintgen, ‘Echoic Repetition’, pp. 214–18.

20 The syntax of 9b–10a has been heavily debated, particularly with regard to ‘engel dryhtnes’ and ‘ealle’ See Bolton, W. F., The Dream of the Rood 9bGoogle Scholar: Engel=Nuntius?’ N&Q 213 (1968), 165–6Google Scholar; Tripp, Raymond P. Jr, ‘The Dream of the Rood: 9b and its Context’, MP 69 (1971), 136–7Google Scholar; Helder, Willem, ‘The Engel Dryhtnes in The Dream of the Rood’, MP 73 (1975), 148–50Google Scholar; and Pickford, T. E., ‘Another Look at the Engel Dryhtnes in The Dream of the Rood’, NM 77 (1976), 565–8Google Scholar; also the Dickins and Ross and ASPR editions. With Krapp I take ealle to be the subject of beheoldon and ‘engel dryhtnes’ to be the object, ‘all beheld the angel of the Lord’, ‘all’ anticipating the explicit subject in 11b–12. According to my understanding, the sentence begins at 9b and ends with 12b. ‘Ne wæs ðær huru fracodes gealga’ is parenthetical, an interruption in the major strain of thought which resumes with ‘ac hine þær beheoldon’ and the full statement of the subject. The chiasmus and the repetition of beheoldon help to indicate that the poet is resuming the sentence where he left off before the parenthesis. For a similar punctuation, see Huppé, , The Web of Words, p. 64.Google Scholar

21 Smith, James, ‘The Garments that Honour the Cross in The Dream of the Rood’, ASE 4 (1975), 29–55Google Scholar, discusses the vision as depicting the dreamer's ‘discovery’ of the cross and his increasing perception through the ‘eyes’ of the ‘body’, the ‘mind’ and ‘faith’.

22 In my reading each of these begins a sentence. I omit those which are unmistakably variations of a preceding verb or are part of a subordinate clause. The sense of being overwhelmed by verbs comes from these verbs as well, many of which begin a half-line; see 33a, 34a, 36a, 43a, 56a, 62a and 71a.

23 Bright's Old English Grammar, ed. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Ringler, Richard N., 3rd ed. (New York, 1971), p. 93.Google Scholar

24 Burrow, ‘An Approach’, pp. 125–6, and Burlin, ‘The Vita Contemplativa’, p. 28; see also Leiter, ‘Patterns of Transformation’, which claims that ‘repetition, parallelism, shifting of the verb of action to the semantically (though not rhythmically) important initial position … are fairly simple devices of a stylization that achieves emotional heightening precisely at the necessary moment in the battle metaphor’ (pp. 96–7).

25 ‘Echoic Repetition’, pp. 219–20; Burrow notes ‘the compressed paratactic syntax, the lengthened line, and the rapid sequence of verbs of action’ in 30–3, as well as the repetition of þær (‘An Approach’, p. 126).

26 See Woolf, for the seminal article on the poet's depiction of Christ's death. She asserts that he ‘does not speak of Christ's death: the climax of the poem is simply, Crist was on rode, and His death is thereafter described as a sleep, in terms which with cathartic effect suggest exhaustion, release and temporary rest’ (‘Doctrinal Influences’, p. 148). For a strong argument that the poet does depict Christ's death, see del Maestro, M. L., ‘The Dream of the Rood and the Militia Christi: Perspective in Paradox’, Amer. Benedictine Rev. 27 (1976), 171–86.Google Scholar

27 Note that, as I have stated above, p. 172, parenthetical independent clauses and ones that form a compound with preceding independent clauses do not participate in the predominant word-order patterns. Accordingly 62b, 64b and 68b do not interrupt the verb-initial pattern. 62b explains the modifying phrase ‘steame bedrifenne’ (62a) and so is parenthetical (Krapp punctuates it as a case of asyndetic parataxis with a semicolon). 64b forms a compound via the conjunction ond. 68b, as Krapp indicates with his punctuation, is subordinated by þa, ‘when’.

28 Tate, George S., ‘Chiasmus as Metaphor: the Figura Crucis Tradition and The Dream of the Rood’, NM 79 (1978), 114–25Google Scholar, demonstrates how chiasmus is metaphorically appropriate to the crucifixion tale, but he outlines a different chiastic structure for these scenes. He makes the centre of the chiasmus the crucifixion scene, which he defines as occurring in 44–56 (44 and 56b forming a chiastic frame for the episode). On the initial side of this centre, the actions of the cross ‘typologically’ precede Christ's and on the far side those of Christ precede the cross's. To make this arrangement work Tate has not only to resort to an admittedly ‘delicate’ correspondence but also to omit from the crucifixion 39–43, in which Christ climbs heroically on to the cross, and he has to insert somewhere between 67a and 75 b a scene in which ‘Christ is resurrected and clothed in glory’ (124–5).

29 ‘Christ the Victor-Vanquished’, pp. 668–71.

30 In fifty-one lines the poet uses þa a number of times but more defined adverbs less frequently: iu once at the beginning (28a), siððan twice (49b and 71b) and hwile twice (64b and 70b).

31 According to Krapp's punctuation, frineð (112a) begins a new sentence. But, if we note the parallel structure of 110 and 117 and 115 and 119 and the complementary structure of 110 and 115, it becomes clear that 110–16 form one sentence with the same basic structure as that of 117–21. See Huppeé, , the Web of Words, p. 70Google Scholar, for a similar interpretation.

32 ‘Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, p. 55.

33 ‘The Unity’, p. 470; see also Burrow, ‘An Approach’, pp. 130–1, and Burlin, ‘The Vita Contemplativa’, p. 31.

34 ‘The Unity’, p. 470.

35 ‘Echoic Repetition’, p. 222.

36 ‘An Approach’, p. 132.

37 The asyndetic parataxis is implied by the echo of ‘is me’ in ‘me is’, the reference of þam in the second part to the first part and the redundancy in content.

38 ‘Echoic Repetition’, p. 222.

39 Edition, p. liv.

40 For other discussions of accrued meaning, see Fleming, ‘Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, p. 70; Patten, ‘Structure and Meaning’, pp. 385–9; and Swanton, Michael J., ‘Ambiguity and Anticipation in The Dream of the Rood’, NM 70 (1969), 407–25.Google Scholar

41 I wish to thank Professors Daniel G. Calder and Stanley B. Greenfield for their generous help in the development and revision of this article. The concepts are clearer and the analysis more accurate because of their criticisms and suggestions.