The Dream of the Rood
A dreamer sees a jewelled cross standing in the air at midnight, and the wood itself begins to speak, telling how it was felled, carried to a hill and made to hold the young warrior who climbed it. The Crucifixion is narrated by the gallows, in the vocabulary of a Germanic retainer bound to a lord he is forbidden to defend. Lines of it were carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross two centuries before the Vercelli manuscript was written.
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Lineage
- retells ↑ The Gospels
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Quest object (Greimas)
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Closest analogues
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- 41% · 9 shared