Dreme He Barefot, Dreme He Shod'. Chaucer As A Performer Of Dream Visions

Klitgård, Ebbe

English Studies 2000 81 (6)506-512
(ReLIS:jul:juljig:y:2000:v:81:i:6:p:506-512)

Abstract:

This article takes as its starting point a quotation from Chaucer's House of Fame, 98, a detail characteristic of Chaucer's performing voice in his four major dream visions. What we have here is a playful and humorous distinction between dreaming a-night (barefoot) and daydreaming (with one's shoes on). The context is an otherwise relatively serious invocation to the god of sleep, Morpheus, in a conventional opening inspired by Virgil and Dante, as we can see from the poem's many echoes of The Aeneid and The Divine Comedy. What Chaucer does is to juxtapose the lofty rhetoric of the invocation with a homely metaphor, which incidentally one critic has seen as a nursery rhyme interference. 1 In other words Chaucer is being down-to-earth in addressing his audience on an otherwise high rhetorical note demanded by the genre, noting in everyday terms that dreams take place both night and day.

Keywords: literatura inglesa ; Inglés
Pages: 506-512
Volume: 81
Year: 2000
Issue: 6

 (go top)