Stylistic disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood

Abstract

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.

The Dream of the Rood and the Ruthwell monument

“…Yet this tree is also a beacen, a word which has retained in modern English its double sense of flaming brand and abstract sign, suggesting both materiality and immateriality. Along with the dreamer, we are gazing at a 'sigebeam' [victory-beam] (13) and are reminded 'ne waes ðaer huru fracodes gealga' [that was no felon's gallows] (10). Of course, the denial itself evokes images of human suffering and death -of a wooden beam on which bodies become corpses, where animate subject is transformed into inanimate object.…”

“…Pasternack points out that all the sentences between 78 and 121 'make connectionseither typological ones between historical events, analogical ones between historical event and Judgement Day or between contemporary man and Judgement Day, or tropological ones between historical event and contemporary man'. 10 It is the nonhuman, speaking thing making these connections (line 121 is where its speech finishes). It is the nonhuman tree-gallows-rood whose lifespan and perspective is stretchy and spacious enough to encompass the distant past, the present and the far future; the listening human is unable to make such vast temporal leaps without its help.…”