ABSTRACT
The discovery of a new poet encouraged scholars to attach particular importance to Cynewulf and make him the author of yet more verse when three of the runic signatures were deciphered in 1840. Most arguments for Cynewulf’s authorship of other unsigned poems are impressionistic, or deal with perceived similarities of theme. And even earlier attempts at more objective evidence now seem unpersuasive. Parallel passages such as those collected by Claes Schaar, for example, carry little weight now that oral-formulaic theory has shown the pervasiveness of formulae and their public, conventional nature. Conner’s source evidence sheds a different light on the metrical evidence for dating Cynewulf, which is based on the principle of decay in the preservation of metrical archaisms. The language of Old English poetry, like most poetic languages, is extremely conservative, preserving relic forms that had passed out of everyday speech long before they were lost in verse.
