SOURCE: "Doctrinal Influences on The Dream of the Rood," in Medium Aevum, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, 1958, pp. 137-53.

In the following essay, Woolf assesses The Dream of the Rood 's emphasis on Christ's supremacy and suffering, stating that the poet "reflected exactly the doctrinal pattern of thought of his time. '

The unique quality of the treatment of the Crucifixion in the Dream of the Rood has been long admired, and memorably commented upon. It is unique, not only in Old English poetry—that would not be remarkable since so little survives—but in the whole range of English, and perhaps even western, literature. It is almost certain that this uniqueness of conception is the Anglo-Saxon poet's own, and that he did not have before him a source which he followed closely. There is a compactness and intensity in the poem that would be startling in an Anglo-Saxon translation...