Ebook: Ingeld and Christ: Heroic Concepts and Values in Old English Christian Poetry

The reader might anticipate from the title, "Ingeld and Christ", that Professor Cherniss's book, a rewrite of his dissertation with two added chapters, will sort out and contrast the pagan and Christian elements in Old English poetry.

The author's thesis is that in Old English poetry, the "heroic" elements are eventually almost totally displaced by Christian ones. In chapters two through five he isolates "a small group of concepts, closely related to one another, central to secular Germanic heroic thought and, it is hoped, readily identifiable as being pre-Christian..."

In the second part of the book the author discusses familiar poetic texts according to the relative presence, absence, or displacement of these pre-Christian norms of loyalty, vengeance, treasure, and exile.