SOURCE: "Christ as Hero in The Dream of the Rood," in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin de la Société Néophilologique, Vol. LXXI, No. 3, 1970, pp. 202-10.

In the following essay, Wolf examines the poet's 'presentation of the Crucifixion as a battle" in The Dream of the Rood, focusing on theme and diction.

The unlettered singer who attempts to create songs embodying thematic material novel to his tradition encounters severe and sometimes insurmountable difficulties. With the option of creating original formulas virtually denied him, the artist must find the means of expressing these new ideas in the traditional verses developed slowly by generations of his predecessors in their treatment of stories long familiar both to themselves and to their audiences. That he does not always succeed in the task is clear from the failure of Yugoslavian bards to cope with the socio-political themes of Marxism. Problems similar to those faced...