SOURCE: Earl R. Anderson, "Poetry and the Gifts of Men," in Cynewulf: Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983, pp. 28-44.

In the excerpt that follows, Anderson suggests that Cynewulf considered his creative talents as an instance of the "gifts of men," a theological concept that emphasizes the obligation to use such gifts in the service of faith.

Some years ago in his Doctrine and Poetry, B. F. Huppe argued that Augustine's De doctrina christiana was a formative influence on Anglo-Saxon Christian views of poetry. The argument, by now familiar through so many attempts to apply allegorical interpretations to Old English poems, was that exegetical methods for understanding Scripture, as described by Augustine, were extended to poetry, and that the Anglo-Saxons, in consequence, began to compose poetry in an allegorical mode. The question whether or not exegetical principles can be applied to poems like...