Is the “Christ” of Cynewulf a Single Poem?

Abstract

In the first edition of the Exeter Book, published in 1842, Mr. Thorpe, the editor, divided the contents of the first twentysix leaves (pp. 1-106 of the printed edition), into twenty separate sections or poems, and gave to each a title drawn from the subject treated. He evidently considered the whole a collection of hymns, and failed to see the connection of the separate pieces with one another. Perhaps this failure was the cause of the low estimate of their literary value, which he expresses in his preface and notes. Eleven years later, Dietrich, in an article in the "Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum", put forth the theory that what Thorpe had published as a series of hymns was a single poem, and proposed the name "Christ". Both the theory and the name have been accepted by all critics, anl the two editions that have appeared since Dietrich's article, (Grein's in 1856 and Gollancz's in 1892) treat the work as a single poem. Gollancz even goes so far as to entitle it "an eighth century epic". Dietrich's arguments for the unity of the work are based chiefly on the thread of thought which he finds, as he thinks, running through the whole. Most of this article is therefore devoted to showing the relation of the separate hymns, as Thorpe had published them, to what precedes or follows each. He recognizes, however, the difference of subject-matter in different parts and makes three divisions of the whole, leaving Thorpe's divisions as subordinate to these. He puts in the first part six of Thorpe's sections: in the second, four: in the third, nine: and leaves by itself Thorpe's twentieth piece, the "Poem moral and religious", which is now universally regarded