Date of Award
2011
Type
Thesis
Major
English Language and Literature - Literature Concentration
Department
English
Abstract
Old English religious verse - born out of a productive fusion between pre-existing Germanic ideals and Christian value-systems brought to England at the end of the sixth century - grapples energetically with the question of how people ought to live morally upright lives pleasing to God. In Beowulf, Judith, Juliana, and The Dream of the Rood, a model for the believer/God relationship is constructed from a common pattern of the Germanic thane/lord relationship, but, like garments cut from the same cloth by different tailors, each poem crafts its subject differently. Still, each is constructed around a core conception of the relationship in which the heroic believer must independently merit God's favour and in which God must obtain a worthy believer in order for either to succeed in accomplishing their shared goals.
Recommended Citation
Ross, Jennifer, "Constructing the Christian: Agency and Emulation in Old English Poetry" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. 111.
https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/111
Comments
Honors Thesis