Browse Items (16330 total)

Although Chaucer scholarship generally exaggerates the poet's learning, it seems to have missed his use of Huon de Méri's "Tornoiemenz" in LGWP. Scholarship also overemphasizes the visionary features of Chaucer's dream poems, while underestimating…

Lyric poem about a dream within a dream. An accompanying note mentions that both Langland and Chaucer "often described a dream within a dream."

Includes BD, HF, PF, LGW, Anel, ABC, Adam, MercB, Ros, Truth, Gent, Sted, Scog, Buk, and Purse, with a general preface, an introduction for each of the longer works, selected background works and critical assessments (focusing on the dream visions),…

Characterizes the dreamer of BD as consistently stupid, a "nonpareil of dullwittedness"-- technically, psychologically, and allegorically.

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,…

Questions whether Chaucer's deviations from traditional literary standards disguise or disclose personal messages.

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.

"[I]nvestigates the distinctive conceptions of literary authorship of John Skelton, William Dunbar, Stephen Hawes, and Gavin Douglas by means of close and comparative readings of their utilisation of a particular form and mode: framed first-person…

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…

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…

Considers BD in a larger survey of dream visions, with particular attention to "connections [to] the conventions of medieval mystical texts."

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…

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 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 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…

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…

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…

Analyzes the ways in which Chaucer uses the word "sight" in order to examine concepts of taste and tastelessness in RvT.

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…