A ndreas

Abstract

Andreas is an Old English poem in the Vercelli Book manuscript that recounts the apocryphal legend of St. Andrew's adventure to rescue his fellow apostle Matthew from imprisonment in the cannibal land of Mermedonia, as well as Andrew's own conversion of the heathen Mermedonians to Christianity. The poem uses a heroic idiom similar to that of Beowulf , and has been compared to the works of the Old English poet known as Cynewulf. Andreas has been studied extensively from the perspectives of typological criticism, postcolonial criticism, theories of the body, and ecocriticism, among others.