Cynewulf

Cynewulf is one of twelveOld English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th and early 10th centuries.

He is famous for his religious compositions, and is regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that are interwoven into the four poems which comprise his scholastically recognized corpus. These poems are: The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene, and Christ II (also referred to as The Ascension).

The four signed poems of Cynewulf are vast in that they collectively comprise several thousand lines of verse. In comparison, the one work attributed to Cædmon, Cædmon's Hymn, is quite succinct at nine lines.

Some basic statements can be made by examining such aspects as the spellings of his name and his verse. Although the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts were primarily late West Saxon in their scribal translations, it is most probable that Cynewulf wrote in the Anglian dialect and it follows that he resided either in the province of Northumbria or Mercia.

This is shown through linguistic and metrical analysis of his poems, i.e. Elene, where in the poem’s epilogue (beginning l.1236) the “imperfect rhymes” become corrected when Anglian forms of the words are substituted for the West Saxon forms. For instance, the manuscript presents the miht:peaht false rhyme which can be corrected when the middle vowel sounds of both words are replaced with an æ sound. The new maeht:paeht rhyme shows a typical Anglian smoothing of the ea. Numerous other “Anglianisms” in Elene and Juliana have been taken to be indicative of an original Anglian dialect underlying the West Saxon translation of the texts. Any definite conclusion to Cynewulf being either Northumbrian or Mercian has been hard to come by, but linguistic evidence suggests that the medial e in the signed Cynewulf would have, during the broad window period of Cynewulf’s existence, been characteristic of a Mercian dialect.

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