DREAM VISION

dream vision: translation

(dream allegory)

The dream vision was a favorite genre of medieval narrative poetry, in which a narrator falls asleep and dreams what becomes the main body of the story. Often the dream was in the form of an ALLEGORY, or was otherwise enigmatic, and called for interpretation on the part of the reader. Dream visions might be serious moral or religious tracts like ALANUS DE INSULIS’sComplaint of Nature(ca. 1165), or might be comic or romantic secular love poems like CHAUCER’sHOUSE OF FAME(ca. 1379), or allegorical political debates like the 14th-century MIDDLE ENGLISH poem in ALLITERATIVE VERSEWINNER ANDWASTER, or perhaps even satirical, like the third book ofThe Lamentations of Matheolus(ca. 1295), containing a vision of heaven where married men receive the highest honor because of the great travail they have in this world. But within this wide variance of form and content, medieval dream visions generally have certain important elements in common.

First, dream visions are written in the first person. The narrator becomes the dreamer, and relates the story as his own dream experience. Sometimes the dreamer is the protagonist of the dream fiction, but sometimes he is merely an observer, as is the dreamer of Chaucer’sBOOK OF THE DUCHESS(ca. 1369). Second, the dream itself depicts what Katherine Lynch calls a liminal experience (1988, 47), one in which the dreamer crosses a border into a supernatural or mystical realm that reflects in some way on the world he has left and must return to. Thus the narrator of Chaucer’sPARLIAMENT OF FOWLS(ca. 1382) visits the Temple of Venus and the garden of the goddess Natura, and the dreamer ofPEARLhas a paradisal vision of his lost Pearl’s participation in the train of the Virgin Mary. Third, the dream contains an important lesson or is in some way instructive for the dreamer: Often the dreamer is presented in a state of melancholy or some other mental confusion before he falls asleep, suggesting that he has some unresolved difficulty that the dream will help him work out.Thus the dreamer inThe Parliament of Fowlsbegins by reading a book in order to learn a “certain thing,” but falls asleep, and the dream seems intended as an answer to his problem. Many dream visions include other common elements. Often the dreamer is naïve or obtuse, as the narrator of Chaucer’sBook of the Duchessis unaware of the implications of the things he hears from the Black Knight in his dream, or the narrator ofThe Parliament of Fowlsgoes back to reading after his vision, oblivious to his dream’s message.Many times the dreamer is accompanied by a guide or mentor, as, for example, Chaucer’s narrator is carried away by a talkative Eagle inThe House of Fame, or guided by Scipio Africanus inThe Parliament of Fowls.

The dream serves at least two significant functions for the poet. First, it provides a frame for the narrative, and thereby allows the writer to explore different levels of narration, and, further, to examine the role of the narrator and his relationship with the narration. It becomes a self-reflexive genre, as at the end of MACHAUT’sFonteinne Amoureuse(ca. 1360–62), when the narrator says he will go back and write down the dream he has just had. On a deeper level, the dream itself acts as a real dream might for a modern psychoanalyst— it explores the interiority of the narrator’s mind, suggesting perhaps that the troubled narrator must look inside himself to find the solutions to the dilemmas that plague him. Nowhere is this more manifest than in LANGLAND’sPIERS PLOWMAN(ca. 1377), where, in the middle passūs, the dreamer (Will) engages in debates with allegorical figures ofWit, Study, Reason, and Imaginitive—attributes of his own mind.

While the significance of dreams is attested to in ancient literature, and Joseph’s interpretations of Pharoah’s dreams in the book of Genesis would have been familiar to medieval writers, the more direct inspiration for dream vision narratives is surely Cicero’sSomnium Scipionis, or “The Dream of Scipio,” popular in the Middle Ages through the fourth-century commentary on the text by MACROBIUS. Indeed, Chaucer acknowledges this inspiration at the beginning ofThe Parliament of Fowls, when his narrator falls asleep reading Cicero’s text. Macrobius delineates three meaningful kinds of dreams: the vision (visio) or prophetic vision, in which what we dream actually comes true; the oracular dream (oraculum), in which an authority figure appears and gives us a message; and the enigmatic dream (somnium), which reveals a truth but in a veiled manner that must be interpreted. This last, thesomnium, became the perfect model for the dream vision, since poets could create an ambiguous narrative that required some thoughtful interpretation by the reader or audience. This explains in part why many dream narratives are open-ended or, in Chaucer’s case, unfinished, likeThe House of Fame. In particular if the narrator is presented as obtuse, the author was inviting the reader to complete the understanding of the poem. The other most significant textual influence on the dream narrative was the very popular 13thcenturyROMAN DE LA ROSEby GUILLAUME DE LORRIS and JEAN DEMEUN.While most previous dream visions had been philosophical or religious, theRoman de la Roseinitiated the vogue for lovevisions in the form of dreams. Typically these were set in a spring landscape, where the narrator falls asleep to the singing of the birds or the babbling of a brook, and awakens, perhaps in another beautiful garden. Chaucer’s love visions, more introspective than most, present the dreamer falling asleep while reading a book.

Other dream visions of note are the 14thcentury EnglishParliament of the Three Ages, and two poems by so-called Scottish Chaucerians Gavin DOUGLAS (The Palace of Honor) and William DUNBAR (The Thrissil and the Rois). There is even an early example in OLD ENGLISH—The DREAM OF THE ROOD. With the possible exception of the ROMANCE, the dream vision was probably the most popular genre in medieval Europe.

■ Hieatt,Constance B.The Realism of the Dream Vision: The Poetic Exploration of the Dream-Experience in Chaucer and His Contemporaries. De Proprietatibus Litteraum, Series Practica 2. The Hague:Mouton, 1967.

■ Lynch, Kathryn.The High Medieval Dream Vision. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988.

■ Quinn,William A., ed.Chaucer’s Dream Visions and Shorter Poems. New York: Garland, 1999.

■ Russell, J. Stephen.The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988.

■ Spearing, A. C.Medieval Dream Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.