SOURCE: "Structure and Meaning in The Dream of the Rood, " in English Studies, Netherlands, Vol. 49, No. 1, 1968, pp. 385-401.

Here, Patten explores the analogies between the Dreamer and the Cross, the Cross and Christ, and Christ and the Dreamer. She also analyzes the allegorical and historical aspects of The Dream of the Rood.

The existence in The Dream of The Rood of two speakers and two points of view, the cross and the dreamer, appears at first aesthetically disturbing, by seeming to imperil the poem's unity. But, on the contrary, the two points of view provide the backbone of the poem's structure which, at once complex and unified, both creates and reveals the poem's meaning.

This structure divides into three parts (11. 1-27, 28-121, 122-end), each governed by the relation between its own subject and the rood. The cross is the one element common and central to all three parts...