Chaucer's Use of 'The Dream of Scipio' in 'The Parlement of Foulys'
- Author / Editor
- Arthur, Ross G.
Chaucer's Use of 'The Dream of Scipio' in 'The Parlement of Foulys'
- Published
- American Benedictine Review 38 (1987): 29-49.
- Description
- Critics such as Bennett and Lumiansky discuss Chaucer's Christianization of classical thought, but his adaptation of the "Somnium" in PF actually critiques its limitations. The naive narrator, looking for the "certayn" divine knowledge, is vaguely dissatisfied with the Platonist "science that men lerne" (line 25), which claims that human knowledge confers divinity.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Parliament of Fowls.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.