"The Old English poet cannot do other than omit the names in transferring the ideas to a different poetic idiom, especially such a clearly didactic poem, which assumes an audience less knowledgeable than the author". In one incident, the poet stops short in using an offensive statement dealing with the rites of the Egyptian sun cult; although the basics are there. A careful reading by a person educated in mythology may detect many adapted myths. Scholars also identify sexuality, or the lack thereof, as a central theme in "The Phoenix". Bugge states that “elite Christians, who choose a regimen of the strict sexual purity…[somewhat] emulate the apparent sexlessness of the Phoenix” as depicted in the poem. Notes Editions and translation Cook, Albert Stanburrough (ed.). The Old English Elene, Phoenix, and Physiologus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. The king of birds: or, The lay of the phoenix (1844). An Anglo-Saxon song of the tenth or eleventh century, translated into the metre and alliteration of the original, and communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by English archeologist and philologist George Stephens. Bibliography Blake, N F. The Phoenix. Manchester: Manchester U Press, 1964. Bugge, John. “The Virgin Phoenix,” Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 332-50. Calder, G. Daniel. "The vision of paradise: a symbolic reading of the Old English Phoenix." Anglo-Saxon England (1972): 167-81. Cross, J.E. "The Conception of the Old English Phoenix." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown Univ. Press, 1967. 129-52. Faraci, Dora. "Phoenix." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Ed. Michael Lapide. 1991. 284-301. Fulton, Edward. "On the Authorship of the Anglo-Saxon Poem Phoenix. Modern Language Notes. 11.3 (Mar 1896): 73-85. Heffernan, C F. "The Old English Phoenix: A Reconsideration." Neuphiologische Miteilungen 83 (1982): 239-54. Hood, Todd W. “Could Brego and Nergend be the Direct Objects of Beodan in Lines 497a-498b of the Old English Phoenix?” Matheliende. Vol. Vii, No.1. Athens: University of Georgia, 1999. Hood, Todd W. "Translating the Phoenix from Old English into Modern English Prose and Alliterative Verse." Auburn: Auburn University, 1994. Jones, Timothy. "The Phoenix." Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Paul Szarmach, Teresa M Tavormina, Joel T. Rosenthal. New York: Garland, 1998. 596-7. Kennedy, Charles W. Early English Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. Medieval England: An Encyclopedia, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina and Joel T. Rosenthal. New York: Garland Pub., 1998. Lecocq, Françoise, "L’oiseau