Two original essays and 16 published since 1950 offer a comprehensive view of Cynewulf, his language, and his poetry. The collection contains important new statements on dates, provenance, and canon by R.D. Fulk and Patrick W. Conner, four influential essays that thoroughly explore Cynewulf's runic signature and poetic style, and major contributions to our understanding of the four signed poems of Cynewulf, Fates of the Apostles, Christ II, Juliana, and Elene. Three essays are devoted to each of these poems, and the essays themselves exemplify a broad range of approaches to this highly elusive Anglo-Saxon poet. The volume complements existing book-length treatments of the subject and will be welcome to scholars and students who need the foundations of Cynewulf scholarship at their fingertips.
Preface of the General Editors -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Introduction -- List of Abbreviations -- I. Poet, Canon, Date -- Cynewulf: Canon, Dialect, and Date /R. D. Fulk -- On Dating Cynewulf /Patrick W. Conner -- II. Fates of the Apostles -- Form and Meaning in Cynewulf's Fates of the Apostles /James L. Boren -- The Fates of the Apostles: Imagery, Structure, and Meaning /Constance B. Hieatt -- Cynewulf's Traditions about the Apostles in The Fates of the Apostles /J. E. Cross -- III. Christ II -- Man's Imitation of the Ascension: The Unity of Christ II /Oliver J. H. Grosz -- Cynewulf's Image of the Ascension /Peter Clemoes -- The Descent-Ascent Motif in Christ II of Cynewulf /George Hardin Brown -- IV. Juliana -- Figural Narrative in Cynewulf's Juliana /Joseph Wittig -- Cynewulf's Juliana: A Case at Law /Lenore MacGaffey Abraham -- Juliana: Cynewulf's Dispeller of Delusion /Donald G. Bzdyl -- V. Elene -- Sapiential Structure and Figural Narrative in the Old English Elene /Thomas D. Hill -- Cynewulf's Multiple Revelations /Jackson J. Campbell -- Evangelicism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulf's Elene /Catharine A. Regan -- VI. Signature, Style -- Cynewulf's Runes in Christ II and Elene /Ralph W. V. Elliott -- Cynewulf's Runes in Juliana and The Fates of the Apostles /Ralph W. V. Elliott -- The Diction of the Signed Poems of Cynewulf /Robert E. Diamond -- The Art of Cynewulf's Runic Signatures /Dolores Warwick Frese -- Index.
Biography
Robert E. Bjork
