诺顿英语文学选读书笔记
THE DREAM OF THE ROOD
十字架之梦是最好的古英语宗教诗。作者及年代不详。10世纪后期手稿出现在意大利北部的维切利。手稿由古英语宗教诗歌和弥撒构成。诗歌早于手稿。因为有些章节有变化用古洛尼字母刻在8世纪早期的石头十字架上，这是著名的Ruthwell十字架，在苏格兰南部的Dumfries。而诗歌和该十字架联系不明确。
The Dream of the Rood (i.e., of the Cross) is the finest of a rather large number of religious poems in Old English. Neither its author nor its date of composition is known. It appears in a late tenth-century manuscript located in Vercelli in northern Italy, a manuscript made up of Old English religious poems and sermons. The poem may antedate its manuscript, because some passages from the Rood's speech were carved, with some variations, in runes on a stone cross at some time after its con- struction early in the eighth century; this is the famous Ruthwell Cross, which is preserved near Dumfries in southern Scotland. The precise relation of the poem to this cross is, however, uncertain.
十字架的经历— —十字架因那棵“树”被人变成惩罚罪犯 的工具而感到羞愧，因年轻的基督爬上它的树身而感到谦卑，又因最终成为光荣之树( 十字架)而感到自豪— —暗示与那个伤感、孤独、有罪的做梦者有关。
The experience of the Rood—its humiliation at the hands of those who changed it from tree to instrument of punishment for criminals, its humility when the young hero Christ mounts it, and its pride as the restored "tree of glory"—has a suggestive relevance to the condition of the sad, lonely, sin-stained Dreamer.
他的孤独和伤感是古英语诗歌中典型的放逐者形象。对于十字架，光荣已经替代痛苦，最终最终做梦者描述基督带着从地狱解放出来的圣灵胜利进入天堂，反映了做梦者的希望。
His isolation and melancholy is typical of exile figures in Old English poetry. For the Rood, however, glory has replaced torment, and at the end, the Dreamer's description of Christ's triumphant entiy into heaven with the souls He has liberated from hell reflects the Dreamer's response to the hope that has been brought to him.
基督和十字架的英雄行为相反：基督是英勇和被动的，十字架忠于它的主，并参与主耶稣的死。
Christ and the Cross both act, paradoxically, in keeping with, and diametrically opposed to, a code of heroic action: Christ is heroic and passive, while the Cross is loyal to its lord, yet must participate in his death.
