Vainglory (Old English Poem)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Vainglory is the title given to an Old English gnomic or homiletic poem of eighty-four lines, preserved in the Exeter Book. The precise date of composition is unknown, but the fact of its preservation in a late tenth-century manuscript gives us an approximate terminus ante quem. The poem is structured around a comparison of two basic opposites of human...
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Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Vainglory is the title given to an Old English gnomic or homiletic poem of eighty-four lines, preserved in the Exeter Book. The precise date of composition is unknown, but the fact of its preservation in a late tenth-century manuscript gives us an approximate terminus ante quem. The poem is structured around a comparison of two basic opposites of human conduct; on the one hand, the proud man, who "is the devil's child, enwreathed in flesh" (bi feondes bearn / fl sce bifongen), and, on the other hand, the virtuous man, characterised as God's own son (godes agen bearn).