Kruger, Steven.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 71-89.
Kruger summarizes medieval dream theory and argues that Chaucer exploits "the complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties of dreams, their causes, and their interpretation." Dreams pose interpretive problems in NPT and TC. As dream visions, BD, HF,…
Sola Buil, Ricardo J.
Luis A. Lazaro Lafuente, Jose Simon, and Ricardo J. Sola Buil,eds. Proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Madrid: Universidad de Alcala de Henares, 1996),pp. 261-65.
Questions whether Chaucer's deviations from traditional literary standards disguise or disclose personal messages.
Kruger, Steven F.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Analyzes medieval theory of dreams, tracing development from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. In theory, in literature, and in life, dreams were regarded as both potentially deceptive and potentially illuminating. The work concentrates on…
Argues that Gavin Douglas's construction of Honour and Venus in the "Palyce of Honour," though misogynistic, constitutes a complex allegorical response to Chaucer's model of literary renovation in the HF.
Koff, Leonard Michael.
Nancy van Deusen, ed. Cicero Refused to Die: Ciceronian Influence through the Centuries (Boston: Brill, 2013) , pp. 65-83.
Explores how Chaucer's adaptations in PF of Macrobius's Neoplatonic commentary on Cicero's "Dream of Scipio" anticipate "the humanist recovery of Ciceronian ideals," particularly the "ideal of marriage and mating as civic duty" and the "possibility…
Karpinski, Agnes.
Bernard Dieterle and Manfred Engel, eds. Historizing the Dream/Le rêve du point de vue historique (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019), pp. 93-118.
Assesses relations between dreams and determinism (fate, providence, and prophecy) in three medieval narratives: Kriemhild's dream in the "Nibelungenlied," the dreams in" Der Nonne von Engeltal Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast," and Chanticleer's…
Corsa, Helen Storm.
American Imago 27 (1970): 52-65.
Argues in Freudian terms that dreams in TC disclose psychological aspects of the characters. Criseyde's dream (II, 925-31), added by Chaucer to his source, Boccaccio's "Filostrato," indicates her desire for ravishment and marks her early submission…
Sharma, Govind Narayan.
Indian Journal of English Studies 6 (1965): 1-18.
Describes medieval dream psychology, both medical and Macrobian, and summarizes the realism of dreams as narrative frame in Chaucer's dream visions (BD, HF, PF, and LGWP) and as device of characterization and dramatic irony when dreams are otherwise…
Hacking, Ian.
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 : 245-60, 2001.
Hacking describes cultural assumptions about dreams in Western tradition (biblical, Cartesian, Freudian, etc.), noting especially dreams' presumed separation from "reality" and the complexities of their relationships with narrative. He briefly…
Kruger, Steven F.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 2651A.
Kruger investigates the ambivalent nature of dreams in light of various classical and medieval dream theories, as well as actual accounts of dreams. The "middle vision," neither divine nor satanic, figures in Langland, Nicole Oresme, and Chaucer (BD…
Spearing, A. C.
Mary-Jo Arn, ed. Charles d'Orlans in England, 1415-1440 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 123-44.
Compares Charles's "Fortunes Stabilnes" with James I's "Kingis Quair," focusing on their dream visions and the narrators' responses to dreams. James's poem is more distinctly Chaucerian in its political and philosophical implications, while Charles's…
Considers dream visions in the works of Chaucer and his successors (Hoccleve, Lydgate, Skelton, and Spenser), arguing that these dreams break down "binary" notions, including those of body/mind, gender, and text/reader.
Highlights prominent connections among dreams, medicine, and literature in Chaucer's poetry. Argues that dreams and medicine are integral aspects of Chaucer's works and that the poet shows how they can be experienced through literature to bring…
Hale, David G.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 9 (1988): 47-61.
In Chaucer and other fourteenth-century writers, dreams often prompt the dreamers to try to assert intellectual control over their mysterious experience by classifying the possible causes or truth values of dreams. Earlier classifications of this…
In context of a larger study of dream visions, uses HF as an example of the ironic dream vision, arguing that it treats authority ironically, whereas other dream visions (e.g., Macrobius on Scipio, Julian of Norwich's mystical visions) offer other…
Considers the "authoritative weight" of dreams and visions in literature, focusing on their connections with other forms of prophetic or revelatory texts and offering a taxonomy of varieties. Includes chapters on the biblical Book of Daniel,…
Deeply engaged with literary tradition and the dynamics of translation, TC resists "the patriarchal biases of the founding myth the narrator transmits to us." It "denaturalizes the masculine literary corpus" by revealing the "radical contingency of…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 59 (2017): 137-61.
Argues that FranT provided the "raw material and structures of dramatic feeling" for Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," encouraging critics to adopt a more expansive view of source relations, and observing how and where the tale and the play illuminate each…
Kaempfer, Lucie.
Open Library of Humanities 4.1 (2018): 1-24.
Associates the liquidity of emotions in medieval literature with the Galenic theory of humours, exploring "the different uses of liquidity to represent emotions in Chaucer's work," especially TC, where emotions such as sorrow and joy can be variously…
Roper, Gregory.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 151-75.
ParsT is an examination of conscience that prepares for the act of confession that is Chaucer's Ret. Late-medieval notions of self differ from modern ones; the process of preparing for confession led the penitent to recognize and discard the sinful…
The Augustans were the last English poets to possess enough confidence in their own idiom to attempt to make Chaucer their contemporary. Dryden's modernization of Chaucer was intended to achieve verisimilitude for his 17th-century audience. It…
Dryden's alterations of Chaucer's narrative division, versification, motif and thematic emphasis, and character portrayal follow his avowed principles of translation. But his alterations in the "spirit" of Chaucer's tale violate one of his important…
