Anglo-Saxon
Cynewulf
Cynewulf is one of only a handful of Old English poets known to us by name — not from any external record, but because he wove his own name in runic letters into the closing lines of four poems, as a kind of signed prayer for the reader's intercession.
Nothing certain is known of his life, not even his precise dates; scholars place him anywhere from the 8th to the 9th century based on his language and dialect. The four poems bearing his runic signature are Juliana and Christ II (the Ascension) in the Exeter Book, and Elene and The Fates of the Apostles in the Vercelli Book — all religious verse composed in the traditional alliterative meter inherited from pre-Christian heroic poetry.
Generations of scholars once attributed much more of the Old English corpus to him — Andreas, the Guthlac poems, The Phoenix, The Dream of the Rood — on stylistic grounds, but only the four signed poems can be assigned to him with confidence.
Major Works (8)
- Christ II — translated by Charles W. Kennedy (1910)
- Christ II (Old English) — Religious poem, c. 9th century
- Elene — translated by James M. Garnett (1900; 3rd ed. 1911)
- Elene (Old English) — Religious epic, c. 9th century
- The Fates of the Apostles — translated by Charles W. Kennedy (1910)
- The Fates of the Apostles (Old English) — Religious poem, c. 9th century
- Juliana — translated by Charles W. Kennedy (1910)
- Juliana (Old English) — Saint's life, c. 9th century