SOURCE: "The Dream of the Rood: Patterns of Transformation," in Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, edited by Robert P. Creed, Brown University Press, 1967, pp. 93-127.

In this essay, Leiter studies the transformation of the poem's three characters: Christ, the Cross, and the Dreamer.

The Dream of the Rood is concerned with a process of salvation by means of radical transformation that involves three actors in a universal spiritual crisis. Metamorphosis informs the structure of the poem and gives life and significance to its aesthetic materials.

In presenting these transformations, the poet has recourse to Christian tradition—to the Passion of Christ, the story of the Cross, and the hoped-for conversion of fallen mankind. For poetic reasons the poet casts the Passion, the drama of the Cross, and the salvation of the Dreamer into a series of three almost identical dramatic metaphors that reinforce each other contrapuntally. By this...