The Dream of the Rood: Apothe

In the early middle ages, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in modern day England, and ruled the land from approximately 449BC until 1066BC. They were a Germanic people, and they brought with them a rich narrative tradition. Graybill points out in the opening line of the article that many critics turn up their noses at the Anglo-Saxons, dismissing them as “great shambling oafs with no u

It is this belief, this certainty that the Anglo-Saxons were far more than what they are often credited as being, that drives the article by Mr. Graybill. The bulk of the article is spent analyzing the philosophical paradoxes that make The Dream of Rood more than just another Christian poem. Graybill notes the language used in the poem, and that many lines have dual meanings that point to an “awareness of deep meaning in surface objects” (Graybill, 2). In other words, the Anglo-Saxons were not a superficial people—they did not take the world at face value alone. They were able to delve beneath the seeming realities of life and get to the intellectual and the philosophical. One of the main themes of the poem is that of the cross feeling at the same time both shame and glory—shame that men could murder Christ as they were and that it was the instrument of that murder, and glory that it had been chosen to bear Christ in his journey toward bestowing absolution upon all mankind. Graybill notes how this theme and the way that it is carried out portrays that “there is always another perspective at work whereby the tragedy is seen as an episode in a larger pattern of meaning symbolized by resurrection and redemption” (Graybill, 4). This poem was so skillfully crafted that it is able to take this contrariety of purposes and combine them to create one magnificent totality. The paradox created by the poem, that of simultaneous shame and exultation and physicality and spirituality, i

Some topics in this essay:
Dream Rood, Rood Christian, Cross Christ, Ruthwell Cross, anglo-saxon culture, dream rood, Robert Graybill, graybill notes, anglo-saxon people, , philosophical paradoxes, poem reveals, anglo-saxon literature, graybill 1, graybill 5,