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1 results

  • 33 - The library of Cynewulf

  • from PART IV - COLLECTIONS OF BOOKS
  • Edited by Richard Gameson, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2012
    Print publication:
    22 December 2011, pp 665-669

  • Summary

    The single most important source detectable behind the oeuvre of Cynewulf is, unsurprisingly, the Bible, echoes of various parts of which are scattered throughout three of his four poems. Cynewulf's version of the Passio of St Juliana is nearest in all particulars to that which appears in an early ninth-century collection of Latin saints' lives now in Paris. The role of the Anglo-Saxon poet as editor and arranger, rather than as simple translator of his Latin material, is clearly demonstrated than in Cynewulf's handling of his sources for Fates of the Apostles. If three of his poems reveal a debt to hagiography, the fourth, Christ II, signals Cynewulf's knowledge of certain writings of the Fathers of the church. Cynewulf's corpus shows that he could handle the forms of vernacular poetry. As he had access to selected works by Gregory, Ambrose and Bede, it implies that the poet was based at a major ecclesiastical centre.