Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints

399,-

Kjøp

<p>Religious piety has rarely been animated as vigorously as in <i>Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints</i>. Ranging from lyrical to dramatic to narrative, the individual poems show great inventiveness in reimagining perennial Christian topics. In different poems, for example, Christ expels Lucifer from heaven, resists the devil''s temptation on earth, mounts the cross with zeal to face death, harrows hell at the urging of John the Baptist, appears in disguise to pilot a ship, and presides over the Last Judgment. Satan and the fallen angels lament their plight in a vividly imagined hell and plot against Christ and his saints.</p><p></p><p>In <i>Andreas</i> the poet relates, in language reminiscent of <i>Beowulf</i>, the tribulations of the apostles Andrew and Matthew in a city of cannibals. In <i>The Vision of the Cross</i> (also known as <i>The Dream of the Rood</i>), the cross speaks as a Germanic warrior intolerably torn between the imperative to protect his Lord and the duty