| dc.description | After the anonymous (and still undated) poet of Beowulf, Cynewulf has a good claim to be the most important Anglo-Saxon poet whose vernacular verse has survived. As the accepted author of no fewer than 2,601 lines, such a claim would on its own be uncontested, but recent work has emphasized still further Cynewulf's central importance: his influence on the Andreas-poet has been suggested, and it seems that Cynewulf himself may be the author of Guthlac B.1 The existence of a group of so-called "Cynewulfian poems" (such as The Dream of the Rood and The Phoenix) bears powerful witness to his pre-eminence among Anglo-Saxon poets whose names we know. It is therefore, perhaps, surprising that so little scholarly attention has been focused on the extent to which Cynewulf managed to combine inherited elements of an ultimately oral poetic tradition with aspects of an imported (and ultimately Latin-derived) literate tradition of poetic composition. It is this tension between orality and literacy, and the extent to which Cynewulf can be said to stand at the interface of these two traditions, that this article will seek to explore. | eng |
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