Cynewulf’s Resonance within the Vercelli Book: Linguistic and Spiritual Perspectives Performed across Poetry and Prose

Abstract Despite the fact that unifying themes have been identified and potential organizational logics proposed for the anthology, the Vercelli Book is all too rarely approached as a cohesive textual entity by modern readers. This article undertakes a comparative assessment of four key elements of textual presentation (language mixing, metatextual reference, interlinguistic reference, multiple script usage) as observed across the Vercelli prose texts and two Vercelli Cynewulf poems ( Elene , The Fates of the Apostles ). In so doing, it demonstrates how the same features are employed in strikingly similar ways across texts that are conventionally divided by modern critical boundaries of genre and format. Ultimately, it is argued that both the poetry and prose homiletic material present a consistent perspective with respect to the ideological constructs of Latin, Latinity, and literacy; namely, that they exhibit symbolic and associative values which are made to serve a metonymic purpose of evoking spirituality, scripture, and the divine.