Cynewulf: Structure, Style, And Theme In His Poetry

CYNEWULF Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry EARL R. ANDERSON The four signed poems of Cynewulf— Ascension, Fates o f the Apostles, Juliana, and E le n e -h w e long been studied as a body when dealing with diction, metrics, or other aspects of style. But the signed poems have almost always been studied separately for their structure, thematic development, and cultural background, usually without regard for an individual poem’s relationship to the other three. Cynewulf: Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry is the first book-length critique that places emphasis on the four poems as members of a unified body of poetry. While the four “signed” poems of Cynewulf differ in genre and structure, they share stylistic uniformity not only in the use of formulaic verses and syntactic patterns, but also in diction, rhetoric, and phonological patterning. Cynewulf uses what Dr. Anderson calls the “reflective” style, a style characterized by “sequentializing” rhetorical devices such as anaphora, paral­ lelism, and catalogs, and also by verbal repetition that “confirms” ideas by re­ peating key words. Cynewulfs style is that of a didactic poet whose subject matter consists of information that must be taught to an audience that must be exhorted to believe and learn. Dr. Anderson contrasts this “reflective” style with the “illuminative” style of the Advent Lyrics and the Dream o f the Rood, poems which are often linked with the Cynewulf group on thematic grounds, but which on stylistic grounds are found to belong to an altogether different compositional temperament. Cynewulfs didacticism should alert us to the thematic unity of his poetry at two levels of concern—individual and communal. The spiritual life of the individual Christian, for Cynewulf, is expressed in terms of penitentialism and sapiential ism, two traditions which merge in the theology of compunc­ tion. The spiritual welfare of the Christian (Continued on back flap) Cynewulf Cynewulf Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry EARL R. ANDERSON Rutherford · Madison · Teaneck Iairlei^h Dickinson University Press London and Toronto: Associated University Presses © 1983 by Associated University Presses, Inc. Associated University Presses, Inc. 440 Forsgate Drive Cranbury, N.J. 08512 Associated University Presses Ltd 25 Sicilian Avenue London W C 1A 2QH, England Associated University Presses 2133 Royal Windsor Drive Unit 1 Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5J 1K5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Anderson, Earl R., 1943— Cynewulf, structure, style, and theme in his poetry. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Cynewulf— Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PR1664.A64 1983 829'.4 81-65464 ISBN 0-8386-3091-X Printed in the United States of America To m y fa m ily — Hazel, Jenny, Charlotte, and Daniel Contents 1 The Poet Cynewulf 2 Poetry and the Gifts of Men 3 Ascension and the Advent Lyrics: Two Styles in Meditative Poetry 4 The Fates o f the Apostles: TheAesthetics of the Catalog 5 Juliana 6 The Structure of Elene 7 Constantine and the Christian Ordo 8 The Devil and His Rights 9 Civitas Dei Peregrinans 10 Wisdom and Compunction Conclusion: The Unity of theCynewulf Corpus Appendix A Appendix B Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index 15 28 45 68 84 103 126 134 146 160 176 182 184 186 187 205 240