Your Quiz on “The Dream of the Rood”

1. What is the Rood?

2. What lesson about life and faith does the dreamer-poet draw from his vision?

One of the culturally interesting facets of this poem is how it tries to negotiate between Anglo-Saxon values and Christianity, the two of which oppose one another in various ways. Christianity, with its New Testament message of peace and forgiveness, and its central paradox of a savior who died on a cross, must have been a difficult sell to Anglo-Saxons and their heroic warrior culture.

3. How does the poet bends Christianity to appeal to his audience?

4. Where do the Anglo-Saxon cultural values burst through?

The poet uses superlatives ("the best of dreams," a most rare tree," "brightest of beams") to try to awe listeners. Note the description of the cross: "All that beacon was covered with gold; gems stood fair where it met the ground, five were above the crosspiece."

5. Especially when it is described as drenched with blood, this description makes the cross look like what to the Anglo-Saxons?

6. Why do you think the poet chose this descriptive tactic?

7. What would the impact have been on an Anglo-Saxon audience?

The cross in the dream speaks: "It was long ago--I remember it still--that I was hewn down at the wood's edge, taken from my stump." The set-up is thus very much like the Anglo-Saxon riddles, with the personified and voiced object giving its puzzling story. And the cross seems to be carrying out the Anglo-Saxon "boast" ritual sometimes too.

The crucified Jesus is rendered this way: "Then the young Hero stripped himself--that was God Almighty--strong and stouthearted. He climbed on the high gallows, bold in the sight of many...." Afterwards, his corpse is taken down and "rested there a while, tired after the great struggle."

The poet also gives listeners a pretty effective description of our heavenly afterlife: "And every day I look forward to when the Lord's Cross that I beheld here on earth will fetch me from this short life and bring me then where joy is great, delight in the heavens, where the Lord's folk are seated at the feast, where bliss is eternal." Sounds like a great mead-hall in the sky! (We’ll discuss the notion of the ‘mead-hall’ in The Battle of Maldon and Beowulf.)

We have a "Salvation Army" and use the word "Crusade" rather freely (e.g., Billy Graham's "Crusade Choir," and the predilection for magazines to call medical research a "Crusade against Cancer"). "Onward Christian Soldier" and "A Mighty Fortress Is My God" are familiar hymns. Sports stars thanking God and other forms of "muscular" and even militant "Christianity" thrive without sufficient derision. Don’t forget our annual debate over "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

8. How is the ideological tension, or paradox, of our current culture represented in this poem?

Personification, the bestowal of human capacities upon animals or objects, seems to have been a fairly common poetic device in medieval times.

9. What special perspective on Christ’s sacrifice does that device offer in this short meditative poem?