ABSTRACT
It has come to pass since Kemble's 1 discovery in 1840 of the runic passages establishing a personality upon which conjectural theories might be hung, that the various suppositions as to the life of Cynewulf and the possibility of his authorship of many poems not signed by his name, have been exalted into a Cynewulf problem about which has been waged a bitter if bloodless battle of words. Various critics have gone various lengths in assigning to him poems which are in his manner, and which he might have written. Thus for example Kemble 2
and Thorpe regarded it as probable that Cynewulf was the author of both the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Codex. Ten Brink,3 making unqualified attributions to Cynewulf, which as a matter of fact rest merely on opinion, gives him the Riddles, Phoenix, Vision of the Cross, Descent to Hell, Guthlac, and Andreas, in addition to the Elene, Juliana, and Christ. This is no meagre list. Yet Sarrazin 4 is able to surpass it by arguing for the Cynewulfian authorship of Beowulf, Judith, Wanderer, Seafarer, the Gnomic Verses of the Cottonian MS., and by assuming part of the Genesis, Exodus, Vision of the Cross, and a number of minor poems to be in Cynewulf s manner, and probably composed
in part by him and in part by imitators. To this extent had attribution proceeded by the year 1888.
