The Phoenix (Old English Poem) - Relationship To Old English Christianity

Relationship To Old English Christianity

After the death of the Phoenix, it returns to life, which represents Christian doctrine of the resurrection. This is the central theme of the poem. Through examples taken from the natural world the author of the Phoenix is able to relate Christianity to the text. The phoenix desires to be born again.

Old English Christianity seems to have a generally fatalistic outlook on life. Themes of the inevitability of death and unhappy implications of the Final Judgment, for example, pervade other Old English poetry like Beowulf. Such does not seem to be the case with The Phoenix, which devotes passages to describing the beauty of its objects: the Garden of Eden and the Phoenix bird itself.

The Phoenix conceptualizes existence as a continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, using the analogy of “the nature of corn,” or the harvest. In fact, Bugge considers this reading of The Phoenix, as a symbol Christian soteriology, or the doctrine of resurrection, almost to obvious. However, such an existence is perfected, it does not actually exist in reality, so perhaps the point of expounding on such perfection is to convey a sense of loss, of lamenting what was and can never be again, because of the actions of our own human folly. Thus, in this context, The Phoenix represents a sort of classic fatalist sense of Old English Christianity, but couched and hidden away in terms of the language of beautiful imagery and pleasant descriptions. However, such language really conveys, to readers, negative emotions, which then trigger the true fatalistic nature, the sense of loss, characteristic of Old English Christianity.