The Dream of the Rood:
Note and Outline
Return to my translation of The Dream of the Rood or jump to a DrR Bibliography page.
Note
A notable feature of the poem is the close identification of Christ, Cross, and Dreamer. The Dreamer’s comment (126b-29a) seems un-Christian at first glance, over-competitive, yet it is perhaps not far from St. Paul’s attitudes in Gal. 6:14 (“glory in the Cross”) and 2 Cor. 11:21 (“boasting”). The poem as a whole embodies a typical meditative scheme—Memory, Understanding, Will—and is rich in descriptive and rhetorical artistry as well as spiritual and theological expression. The wedding of form and content seems to me superb.
Outline
- Introduction of the Dream: Memory
- Address (1-3)
- Description of the Cross (4-26)
- Speech by the Cross to the Dreamer: Understanding
- History
- Crucifixion (27-56)
- Christ’s deposition and burial (57-69)
- Deposition and rediscovery of the Cross (70-77)
- Present and future
- Cross’s meaning to men (78-94)
- Exhortation (95-121)
- Dreamer is to proclaim the Cross
- A Cross-centered creed
- History
- Dreamer’s colloquy: Will
- His devotion to the Cross (122-31a)
- His present plight (few friends) and future hopes (131b-46)
- Harrowing of Hell and Ascension: parallel to (and, indeed, the promise of) the Dreamer’s own hopes for "translation" (147-56)
For another, similar, structural outline, see Alvin Lee’s “Toward a Critique of The Dream of the Rood” in Nicholson and Frese, eds., Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation [1975].