robertordt / dotr-evt2-demo

Publishing the "Dream of the Rood" using EVT 2 beta2

The Dream of the Rood

Foreword

The Dream of the Rood, dating back to the first half of the 8th Century in its earliest version, is one of the first Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and one of the main examples of the genre of dream poetry in English. Due to its artistic qualities and overall relevance for Anglo-Saxon studies it is considered one of the most important achievements of Old English poetry; it is also one of the very few texts in this tradition that has been preserved in more than one witness. The complete poem can be found in the late 10th Century Vercelli Book codex, but a fragment was carved in runes on the 8th Century Ruthwell Stone Cross (Dumfriesshire, Scotland), and a small excerpt can be found also on the Brussels Cross (St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels, Belgium), an Anglo-Saxon cross-reliquary of the early 11th century. In the Vercelli Book the poem starts with the with the narrator having a dream: in this dream a wonderful object, which is later to be identified with the Holy Cross, stands in the air and tells the story of the crucifixion of Christ to the narrator.

A digital edition and facsimile

Experimental edition using EVT 2 beta2, published directly on GitHub: https://robertordt.github.io/DOTR-evt2-demo/.