Medieval Dream-Poetry
- Author / Editor
- Spearing, A. C.
Medieval Dream-Poetry
- Published
- New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
- Physical Description
- 64 pp.
- Description
- Studies the backgrounds and traditions of "dream-poetry" in English literature from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, exploring poets' awareness of writing within an ongoing tradition and their uses of the dream device to express their self-reflexive consciousness about being writers. Although not properly a genre, such poetry capitalizes on various earlier traditions of dreams and visions in literature (the Bible, Macrobius, Boethius, etc.), particularly the French "Roman de le Rose." Considers Chaucer; the alliterative tradition of "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," "Winner and Waster," etc.; and the "Chaucerian tradition" of Lydgate, Clanvowe, Dunbar, Skelton, Scottish poetry, and more. Examines each of Chaucer's dream poems (BD, HF, PF, and LGWP) in turn, reading them as a developing sequence that reflects cognizance of real dreams. Also attends to Chaucer's comments on dreams in TC and NPT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess
- House of Fame
- Parliament of Fowls
- Legend of Good Women
- Troilus and Criseyde
- Nun's Priest and His Tale
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations