The Dream of the Rood, one of the first Old English poems, distinctly displays the conflict between Christian and pagan influences during the Anglo-Saxon Era. It initially presents itself as a true Christian story. The Dream revolves around the narrator’s dream, in which he envisions the Cross that Christ was crucified upon – and experiences supernaturally – the ability to converse with the Cross. He is able to listen to its story of how it was cut down from a tree, how it experienced the same pain and torture as Christ endured, and how both it and Christ were later praised and worshipped for the agony they suffered: “With dark nails they drove me through: on me those sores are seen, open malice-wounds. I dared not scathe anyone. They mocked us both, we two together.” Though the story tells the most famous story of Christianity, of Jesus’ crucifixion, the mere ideal of the poem, a man talking to a tree, is based off of a pagan ideal. Facets of paganism are widely known to involve supernatural elements like the presence of spirits, and the spirits in inanimate objects. The fact that the tree was, in essence, a sacrificial element, also connects widely to widely practiced pagan sacrificial rituals. This poem reflects that even after 597, St. Augustine’s arrival to convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, it was still relatively difficult for the churchmen who held power to completely eliminate pagan ideals. This poem explicitly depicts wholly Christian ideas – Christ and a Cross – and yet obviously has still been dramatically influenced by pagan elements regarding spirituality. Since Greek religion was the principal form of the earliest form of paganism, the cultural conflict that the Anglo-Saxons underwent was also with the previous Greek/Roman era. Paganism and Greek religion were both polytheistic, both involved many rituals, sacrifices, and ceremonies, to appease their gods. Ultimately, despite the significant monastic influence that the Greeks transferred to the Anglo-Saxons with paganism, their influence was no match against the dominating force of Christianity. Greek influences on works of literature based on pagan ideals were noticeably overshadowed by Christianity.
Erin Chan, Atty Blatt, Mekayla Melahouris
The cohesiveness of your synthesis question response is really helpful in identifying the link between literature influenced by pagan rituals and how it reflected the onset of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon culture. Your Anglo-Saxon literature example is really interesting and is an insightful approach towards your answer that although Christianity slowly but surely seeped into Anglo-Saxon culture, paganism never really went away and was still evident in their spiritual practices. Your analysis is wrapped up nicely with how you conclude that Christianity triumphed over the similarly pagan Greek religion because based on how works of Anglo-Saxon literature were dominated by Christianity. However, the one thing that you failed to cover is how there was a cultural divide between the Greeks and Anglo-Saxons. Nonetheless, job well done.
ReplyDeleteTrent Kajikawa, Naomi Krieger, Daphne Liu, Wilson Muller