SOURCE: "Crucifixion Witnessed, or Dramatic Interaction in The Dream of the Rood," in Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature: Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield, Phyllis Rugg Brown, Georgia Ronan Crampton, Fred C. Robinson, eds., University of Toronto Press, 1986, pp. 101-13.

In the following essay, Irving describes the treatment of the Crucifixion from the perspectives of the poem's two main characters, the Dreamer and the Rood.

Very few of the countless artistic representations of the Crucifixion in the Middle Ages have the capacity to seize our imaginations like the Old English poem we call The Dream of the Rood. Probably it is rivalled only in the visual arts. Other literary attempts in English to express the complex experience of suffering and witnessing that dominates the event seem to fall short of The Dream of the Rood's special intensity. I think specifically of the later religious lyrics...