The Phoenix (Old English poem)
Old English poem blending pagan myth with Christian allegory.
The Phoenix is an anonymous Old English poem of 677 lines found in the Exeter Book. It is largely a translation and adaptation of the Latin poem De Ave Phoenice attributed to Lactantius.
Quick Facts
- Lines
- 677
- Manuscript
- Exeter Book, folios 55b-65b
- Date of composition
- ninth century
Facts from the source article.
Origins
The Phoenix dates from the ninth century and survives complete in the Exeter Book. It draws on three main sources: Carmen de ave phoenice by Lactantius (early fourth century), the Bible, and Ambrose's Hexaemeron. The first 380 lines paraphrase the Latin poem while removing many pagan elements. The remaining 297 lines apply Christian allegory, drawing on Job 29:18, the New Testament, Revelation, and Genesis. The poem ends with eleven lines mixing Old English and Latin. Authorship is debated; verbal and stylistic similarities suggest Cynewulf may have written it. The period is generally labeled homiletic by scholar Carol Falvo Heffernan, meaning the literature was often written in a sermon style.
Plot
The poem opens by describing a Paradise in eastern lands, a plain with no mountains or valleys, where the weather is mild and foliage never dies. No extreme emotions exist there. Biblical events such as the flood, creation, and Judgment are referenced. The phoenix itself appears at line 85, residing in that forest. It watches the Garden, bathes, makes nests, sings, rules other birds as a prince, and perpetually ages, dies in a fiery death, and is reborn from its ashes. The second part becomes allegorical: the bird symbolizes Christ's death and resurrection, the raising of the dead, and the faithful followers' flight to Paradise. The phoenix may also represent the Virgin Mary and the Catholic Church. The poem concludes with lines describing souls journeying with body after death, adorned like the bird, into heavenly joys.
Relationship to Old English Christianity
The phoenix's return to life embodies the Christian doctrine of resurrection, the poem's central theme. Unlike other Old English poetry such as Beowulf, which dwells on fatalism and Judgment, The Phoenix devotes passages to describing the beauty of the Garden and the bird. It conceptualizes existence as a continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, using the analogy of the harvest. However, such perfected existence does not exist in reality, so the poem may convey a sense of loss and lament for what human folly has cost, couching a fatalistic outlook in beautiful imagery.
Critical assessment
Scholars often discuss the absence of pagan names and details in The Phoenix. J. E. Cross disagreed with O. F. Emerson's theory that the poet omitted classical allusions to Christianize the myth, arguing the poet could not do otherwise when transferring ideas to a different poetic idiom for a less knowledgeable audience. The poet stops short of an offensive statement about Egyptian sun-cult rites. Scholars also identify sexuality, or its lack, as a theme; Bugge notes that elite Christians who chose strict sexual purity emulated the apparent sexlessness of the phoenix.
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