Cynewulf as author: Medieval reality or modern myth?

Stodnick, Jacqueline

doi:10.7227/bjrl.79.3.5

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Cynewulf

Birkett

2017

The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain

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Cynewulf is the only named Anglo‐Saxon poet associated with a body of Old English verse. The runic signature Cyn(e)wulf is appended to four surviving Old English poems; The Fates of the Apostles and Elene in the Vercelli Book and Christ II and Juliana in the Exeter Book, whilst the unsigned poem Guthlac B is sometimes attributed to the same poet on stylistic grounds. As a group of authored poems within a largely anonymous tradition, the Cynewulf canon is of great importance for discussions of individual poetic style. However, the biography of this named individual is obscure: all our information about him as a poet comes from the internal evidence of the four colophons, and the reason for the signing of these Old English poems is still the subject of much debate.

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