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2. “The Star-Dream”
Often times lifting whole sections liberally from “The Dream of the Rood”, this work reverses the script and begins with what first appears to be Christ upon the Cross. Abruptly, the scene shifts. There is much scholarly debate as to whether this poem is received in full. With many agreeing there are omissions and indeed strange and anachronistic additions to the text, which was liberated from a mystical library during a conflagration in the last century.
It appears that the next part of the text owes more to the mystical traditions of the late seventeen hundreds onwards, with the equation of Christ to a woman, and further developing the metaphor of the rose into a metaphor of dropping blood. The major character in the poem, who remains unnamed, is take captive during battle and dragged at midnight towards the top of a hill where his enemies force him to view a stone that is variously called the sangas, the cynig, or the syngung stone.
Often times, the poem will repeat the name of the stone in a kenning that extends beyond the usual tradition and is tripartite, with each line extending or commenting upon the kenning in the previous line. After repeated viewings of the stone, with the prisoner made to look upon it at midnight, the scene shifts back into the telling of the crucifixion story, before ending shortly thereafter.
It is unknown whether the ending, which comes in the middle of the line, just after the traditional caesura of the
1. Céostan
A repressed telling, written certain years after Beowulf, containing the battles of a mainly female warrior clan in direct opposition to the invading Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Instead of the heroic journey and eventual death due to hubris proposed in the earlier poem, this telling of the classic story of a band against outsiders suggests a quiescence to the eventual fact of loss.
The death count within even the existing fragments is thousands upon thousands before the titular heroine is defeated at last. But she does not remove from life without inflicting a grievous wound on her opponent. She does not gloat, nor does she relish the victory, as it is pyrrhic at best: all her allies are gone and her land is dead.
In a compelling final installment, she rips out the heart of her victim and eats it to absorb his life, memories, and wisdom.
A Short Catalog of the Alternate Canon
Si Dieu n’existant pas” the old Voltaire sawhorse goes, “il fraudait l’inventir.” Such is the case with the Alternate Canon of English Literature. Indeed, in many places it is far easier to identify the truth (always lower case, subjective– as how can beings in the process of self-observation ever exit and exist as a class above, as an Ur-object of the process?) only by teasing out the contradictions of the un-truth that exists within. For that reason, the editors of this list have spared no expense in building an alternate list of classic Literature. Where the works are obscurantist, they are also hermeneutic. Where they are unavailable, this list ensures a short description. Where the work is preposterous to the observer bound by a slave’s devotion to the assumption that “the truth shall set you free”, you will find the higher assertion that it is better to know for sure the lie than worry about the truth.
This slender, annotated list, is a sleek companion to comment upon and enhance the classical canon of literature. By no means does it intend to detract or propose a true alternative. Without a mainstreaming, there is no alternation. But this alternate canon comes closer to the platonic ideal through the simple and repeatable fact that none of these works exist, per se, and are therefore as close as humanly possible to human forms.
This list begins in the far reaches of history, with companion works to “Caedmon’s Hymn” and Beowulf, and stretches to approximately the end of the world, which by all proper historical measurements happened at least twice in the current century. In the interest of veracity, this list takes up the well-documented argument that the world ended on or around the start of the two thousandth year. It is there, and with those late entries into the canon- minor though they all are- that this list ends.
-The Editors.
A Short Catalog of the Alternate Canon 