The Dream of The Rood General

Question 1

Gender

Answer 1

Cross is a feminized figure in the poem against which Christ’s triumphal masculinity is constructed in opposition (MARY DOCKRAY MILLER)

‘The Cross is both a retainer and an anti‐retainer—in this topsy‐turvy world where God dies and torture brings life, heroic obedience is paradoxically to slay one’s lord; to be a warrior, a man, is to submit to being feminized, impotent, placed in the passive and subject position by Christ.[…] In a poem constructed upon the paradox of a Christ who is both Man and God, which revels in polysemy and shifting identities, it should perhaps not be surprising that gender is also a fluid and paradoxical characteristic. (DAVID CLARK)

Question 2

Sexual Connotations:

Answer 2

‘Gestigan’ - ‘an ascent to heaven’ (but used 3 times in Genesis A regarding ‘sexuality, legitimacy, and patrimony’)

ymbclyppan ‘to embrace’

Question 3

SUFFERING

Answer 3

suffering shows ‘the new Christian heroism of the martyr rather than the old Germanic heroism’ (IRVING)

Cross stands for ‘the innocent Paradisal world of non‐human nature… violated and appalled by man’s cruelty and forced, against nature, to torture nature’s own creator’

Christ is young hero but also weak and tortured: man is saved not by intervention but by engaging in Christ’s suffering.

Question 4

KEY QUOTES

Answer 4

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