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Please use the attached notes for reference.
What is the relation between visionary and textual experience? What are the boundaries and intersections between reading, dreaming, and writing? How do mystical and visionary works navigate their own textual nature? For this paper, you will address these and related questions in relation to ONE of the following works we have read: Dante’s Vita Nuova, one of Chaucer’s dream-visions (PF, BD, or HF), or Julian of Norwich’s Shewings. The goal of the paper is to understand the interrelationship between dream or visionary experience and reading-writing in the work, how its author represents their connection and difference. We will discuss possible approaches to each work in class.
Some relevant sources:
Todorović, Jelena, Dante and the Dynamics of Textual Exchange (New York, NY, 2016; online edn, Fordham Scholarship Online, 22 Sept. 2016),
Cervigni, Dino S. Dante’s poetry of dreams / Dino S. Cervigni L.S. Olschki Firenze 1986
Aronoff, Marcia. “Dream and Non-Dream in Dante’s The Vita Nuova.” Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition 16, no. 1 (1976): 18–32.
Boitani, P. (2004). “Old books brought to life in dreams: The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls.” In P. Boitani & J. Mann (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 58-77). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, T. S. 2011. “Writing Dreams to Good: Reading as Writing and Writing as Reading in Chaucer’s Dream Visions.” Style: A Quarterly Journal of Aesthetics, Poetics, Stylistics, and Literary Criticism 45 (3): 528–48
Johnson, Lynn Staley. “The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the Works
of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.” Speculum 66 (1991): 820–38.
Watson, Nicholas. “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love.” Speculum 68, no. 3 (1993): 637–83.
Peters, Brad. “Julian of Norwich and the Internalized Dialogue of Prayer.” Mystics Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1994): 122–30.
Steven F. Kruger. “Dreams and Fiction.” in Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 123-40
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PF, BD, HF – Class Notes
PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS
Page from a manuscript of Mantiq al-Tayr(Conference of the Birds), by Farid al-Din Attar,
Isfahan, Iran, ca. 1610
Today we will focus on the related themes of delay, dilation, and duration in PF.
How does the poem navigate between the nature of time and the time of nature?
How are Chaucer’s ethics of reading bound up with the problem of time?
What is the relation between cyclical and unidirectional, circular and linear concepts of time in
the poem?
Some relevant passages from Gillian Adler’s Chaucer and the Ethics of Time:
[T]his whole time, which to us seems so long while it is rolling along, is really a moment
[punctum]. Whatever has an end is not long. – Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalmos
And since it seems a time for waiting [aspettare] . . . All our troubles, if we carefully seek out
their source, derive in some way from not knowing how to make a proper use of time. –
Dante, Convivio
Augustine on time as extension (distensio) in the Confessions :
BOOK OF THE DUCHESS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Gaunt
1.
The medieval dream vision.[1] Biblical sources (e.g. Book of Daniel, Ezekiel, Book of
Revelation, St. Paul’s rapture), Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Macrobius’s commentary
on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, Roman de la Rose. Subtypes: prophetic, philosophical, mystical,
erotic. Subjectivity vs. objectivity. Macrobius’s categorization:
insomnium – nightmare or troubled dream
visium – apparition or hallucination
somnium – ordinary or enigmatic dream
oraculum – oracular or prophetic dream
visio – prophetic vision or visionary dream
Connection to medieval understanding of vision (Augustine’s three levels, extromission vs.
intromission), theories of imagination, and the nature of fiction (integumentum, the four senses
of scripture [Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, / moralis quid agas, quo tendas
anagogia], ‘allegory of the poets’ (See Dante, Convivio, II.i.3-41).
Brief intro to the genre: https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/dream-visions
“What is an image? It is the appearance of an object outside its place (extra locum suum)
because the thing appears not only in its own place but also outside its own place” (Johannes
Peckham, Perspectiva communis, 13).[2]
“When you read, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, three kinds of vision take place: one
with the eyes, when you see the actual letters; another with the human spirit, by which you
think of your neighbor even though he is not there; a third with the attention of the mind, by
which you understand and look at love itself” (Augustine, On Genesis, Book 12).
“A thing’s freedom from matter is the reason why it is able to know; and the capacity to know is
in proportion to the degree of freedom from matter. . . . The senses are able to know because
they are able to receive the likenesses of things without the matter [quia receptivus est
specierum sine materia]; and intellect is still more capable of knowing because it is freer from
matter and unmixed, as we read in Aristotle.” (Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia. q.14 a.1)
The time and space of images and dreams. Where are they? When are they?
2. The dreamer in The Book of the Duchess. His condition: insomnia, “sorweful imaginacioun,”
melancholy, despair, sadness with(out) object, existential and philosophical aspects. Circularity
of symptom and cause, vitality of illness, life-death.
“Alle men han mater of sorow, bot most specyaly he felith mater of sorow that wote and felith
that he is. Alle other sorowes ben unto this in comparison bot as it were gamen to ernest. For
he may make sorow ernestly that wote and felith not onli what he is, bot that he is. And whoso
felid never this sorow, he may make sorow, for whi he felid yit never parfite sorow. This sorow,
when it is had, clensith the soule, not only of synne, bot also of peyne that he hath deservid for
synne. And therto it makith a soule abil to resseive that joye, the whiche revith fro a man alle
wetyng and felyng of his beyng” (The Cloud of Unknowing).
“Things are equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate; for this reason, neither our
sensations nor our opinions tell the truth or lie. For this reason, then, we should not trust them,
but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without wavering, saying about
each single thing that it no more is than is not or both is and is not or neither is nor is not”
(Pyrrho, quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, XIV.18).
crucial lines: “For ther is physician but oon, / That may me hele, but that is doon. / Pass we over
until eft. / That wil nat be, moot neede be left; / Oure firste matere is good to keepe” (39-43).
3.
Genesis of the dream. Dreaming and reading, sleep and creativity, forgetfulness and
(im)potentiality. The nature of sleep. Wonder. Story of Ceyx and Alcyone. Sorrow over sorrow.
Ceyx’s corpse.
“law of kinde” (56)
“I have gret wonder … a wonder thing… So wonderful…” (1, 61, 270)
“To rede her sorwe” (98)
“I am but deed” (204)
Note the difference between Chaucer’s version and his
source! https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph11.htm
4.
The dream begins. The poet’s introduction (270-90) and dream-waking in the chamber
(291-357). Encountering a puppy (387-415). The man in black (443-521).
Presence and self-presence. “I was war of a man in blak, / That sat and had yturned his bak / To
an ook, an huge tree” (445-7). Significance of the oak.
Nature, sorrow, and the boundary of life and death. “Hit was gret wonder that Nature / Myght
suffre any creature / To have such sorwe and be not ded” (467-9).
[1] See Steven Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 1992);
Kathryn L. Lynch, The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary
Form(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988); J. Stephen Russell, The English Dream
Vision: Anatomy of a Form (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1988).
[2] See Coccia, Sensible Life: A Micro-ontology of the Image.
“For I am Sorwe and Sorwe is I” (BD 597).
5. The figure of the Black Knight. Relation between sorrow and time, link between the Black
Knight and the poet.
…so at the laste
I was war of a man in blak,
That sat and had yturned his bak
To an ook, an huge tree.
“Lord,” thoght I, “who may that be?
(lines 444-8)
What is the nature of meaning of the color black (and color more generally) in this poem? How
does black signify within medieval culture?
Melancholy and acedia. Black as absence vs. black as presence. Life and Death. Positive vs.
negative concepts of black. Blackness and beauty (“Nigra sum, sed Formosa” Song of Songs
1:4). Blackness, inexpressibility, and mystical darkness of the superessential. Cf. Hamlet’s “I
have that within which passeth show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe.” Inner vs.
outer blackness. Black as color of vision. Nigredo.
On Chaucer and melancholy, see Carol Falvo Heffernan, The Melancholy Muse: Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Early Medicine (1995).
On melancholy in general, see Saturn and Melancholy (1964) and The Nature of Melancholy:
from Aristotle to Kristeva
What is sorrow? What accounts for the Black Knight’s identification of himself with sorrow?
What is the relationship between sorrow and the temporality of the self, the will, and human
mortality, the facts of birth and death?
Augustine’s definition of sorrow as counter-volition: ‘when we dissent from what happened
against our will, such will is sorrow’ (‘[C]um […] dissentimus ab eo quod nolentibus accidit, talis
voluntas tristitia est’ (Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, 5th
ed. [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1981], XIV. 6).
The Knight’s song, “withoute note, withoute song”:
“I have of sorwe so gret won
That joye gete I never non,
Now that I see my lady bryght,
Which I have loved with al my myght,
Is fro me ded and ys agoon.”
(lines 476-9)
His hopelessness:
No man may my sorwe glade,
That maketh my hewe to falle and fade,
And hath myn understondynge lorn
That me ys wo that I was born!
…
Me is wo that I live hours twelve
…
This is my paine withoute red,
Alwey dying and be nat ded.
(lines, 563-88)
“ … but yet, what to doone?
Be oure Lord, hyt ys to deye soone.
For nothyng I leve hyt noght,
But lyve and deye ryght in this thoght;
For there nys planete in firmament,
Ne in ayr ne in erthe noon element,
That they ne yive me a yifte echone
Of wepynge whan I am allone.
For whan that I avise me wel
And bethenke me every del
How that ther lyeth in rekenyng,
In my sorwe, for nothyng,
And how ther leveth no gladnesse
May glade me of my distresse,
And how I have lost suffisance,
And therto I have no plesance,
Than may I say I have ryght noght.
And whan al this falleth in my thoght,
Allas, than am I overcome!
For that ys doon ys not to come.
I have more sorowe than Tantale.”
(lines 691-709)
Jaime Fumo on the Black Knight and writing (from Making Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess:
Textuality and Reception)
And finally, a thought from Agamben on poetry and impotentiality:
6. Consolation. What kind of consolation does the poem offer? What is the relation between
consolation and conclusion? Or is consolation paradoxically the absence of consolation in a
sense, ‘getting over’ the sorrow of a beloved’s death less a matter of something that ‘makes it
all better’ as a question of getting over oneself, or simply living another day, falling asleep and
waking up…?
“This was my sweven; now it is don” (1334).
HOUSE OF FAME
Summary of the poem
ModE translation
After a brief intro to HF in connection with the epic genre, Dante, and medieval concepts of
translation and authority, we will focus on the following passages and related issues in Books I
and II:
The poet’s introductory discussion of dream theory and the temporal structure of dreams
(lines 1-65).
The author’s blessing and curse of good and bad readers, respectively (lines 81-110) and
medieval concepts of authority and interpretation. Cf “I warn everyone who hears the words
of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the
plagues described in this scroll. 19 And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy,
God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are
described in this scroll” (Revelation 22:18).
The summary of the Aenied “writen on a table of bras” and the phenomenology of reading
(lines 140ff). Cf. the “visibile parlare” of Dante’s Purgatorio. Recall also Augustine’s theory of
vision, which influences both Dante and Chaucer in the HF. “When you read, You shall love your
neighbor as yourself, three kinds of vision take place: one with the eyes, when you see the
actual letters; another with the human spirit, by which you think of your neighbor even though
he is not there; a third with the attention of the mind, by which you understand and look at
love itself” (Augustine, On Genesis, Book 12).
Aside to the reader: hell, historicity, and anachronism (lines 439-50).
Exiting the temple of glass and the horror of emptiness (lines 470-4). For an excellent
meditation on the medieval meanings of the desert, see Michael Uebel, “Medieval Desert
Utopia.”
The poet’s Dantean apostrophe to Thought and the book of memory (lines 523-8). On
memory and the book in medieval culture see Carruthers, “Memory and the book,” in The Book
of Memory (2008) . On Augustine’s theory of memory and Chaucer, see María Beatriz
Hernández Pérez, “Housing Memory in the Late Medieval Literary Tradition: Chaucer’s House of
Fame.”
Geoffrey’s astonishment, the boundaries of sleep, waking, and dream, and the problem of
naming (lines 548-566).
The poet’s self-portrait (via dream of a prolix eagle) (lines 652-660).
The nature of sound, sense, and multiplication (lines 765ff).
Looking back at earth (907). Cf. Dream of Scipio, Dante, et al.
The dreamer’s reprise of St. Paul rapture (lines 979ff)
Books vs experience (lines 1011ff)
The nature of ‘bodies’ in the House of Fame (lines 1066ff).
ERIUGENA ON THE INFINITY OF SEARCH: “since that which human nature seeks and toward
which it tends, whether it moves in the right or the wrong direction, is infinite and not to be
comprehended by any creature, it necessarily follows that its quest is unending and that
therefore it moves forever. And yet although its search is unending, by some miraculous means
it finds what it is seeking for: and again it does not find it, for it cannot be found” (John Scotus
Eriugena, Periphyseon, PL 122:919.)
Regarding Book III, we will focus on the poet’s depiction of himself and his relation to authority,
starting with the eagle’s sketch of Geoffrey’s bookish lifestyle in lines 652-660 and his
preference for books over direct experience in lines 1011ff.
What kind of reader is Geoffrey? What does the poet’s relation to books imply about the nature
of authority? How do the roles and identities of poet and dreamer, writer and reader, intersect
in the dream?
The [Dantean] invocation to Book III (lines 1091-1109).
How do these lines define the authority of the poem? What is Chaucer ultimately saying about
the interrelationships between ‘science’, ‘art’, ‘craft’, ‘sentence’, and ‘vertu’? How does the
invocation compare with the poet-dreamer’s account of himself and his art towards the end of
Book III (lines 1868-1882)?
Lastly, let us attempt to bring together Chaucer’s understanding and depiction of poetic
authority by considering the principle of movement in the poem (which we also addressed
briefly before in relation to the nature of sound).
The ending of the poem (unfinished/unfinishable/unending) leaves us less with the presence of
authority or its proper expression (‘sentence’) than with the movement around and towards it,
the clamor of a crowd climbing over itself to see and hear whatever there is to see and hear in
the seeming appearance of “A man of gret auctoritee” (2158).
In Convivio (IV, vi, 3-5), Dante defines authority in terms of a figure of movement uniting the
vowels:
(3) È dunque da sapere che “autoritade” non è altro
che “atto d’autore”. Questo vocabulo, cioè “autore”,
sanza quella terza lettera C, può discendere da due
principii: l’uno si è uno verbo molto lasciato
dall’uso in gramatica, che significa tanto quanto
“legare parole”, cioè “auieo”. E chi ben guarda lui,
nella sua prima voce apertamente vedrà che elli
stesso lo dimostra, ché solo di legame di parole è
fatto, cioè di sole cinque vocali, che sono anima e
(3) It should be known, then, that “authority” is
nothing but “the pronouncement of an author.” This
word, namely “auctor” without the third letter c, has
two possible sources of derivation. One is a verb that
has very much fallen out of use in Latin and which
signifies more or less “to tie words together,” that is,
“auieo.” Anyone who studies it carefully in its first
form will observe that it displays its own meaning, for
it is made up only of the ties of words, that is, of the
five vowels alone, which are the soul and tie of every
legame d’ogni parole, e composto d’esse per modo
volubile, a figurare imagine di legame.
word, and is composed of them in a different order, so
as to portray the image of a tie.
(4) Ché, cominciando dall’A, nell’U quindi si
rivolve, e viene diritto per I nell’E, quindi si rivolve
e torna nell’O: sì che veramente imagina questa
figura: A, E, I, O, U, la quale è figura di legame. E
in quanto “autore” viene e discende da questo verbo,
si prende solo per li poeti, che coll’arte musaica le
loro parole hanno legate; e di questa significazione
al presente non s’intende.
(4) For beginning with A it turns back to U, goes
straight through to I and E, then turns back and comes
to O, so that it truly portrays this image: A, E, I, O, U,
which is the figure of a tie. Insofar as “author” is
derived and comes from this verb, it is used only to
refer to poets who have tied their words together with
the art of poetry; but at present we are not concerned
with this meaning.
(5) L’altro principio onde “autore” discende, sì
come testimonia, Uguiccione nel principio delle sue
Derivazioni, è uno vocabulo greco che dice
“autentin”, che tanto vale in latino quanto “degno di
fede e d’obedienza”. E così “autore”, quinci
derivato, si prende per ogni persona degna d’essere
creduta e obedita. E da questo viene questo
vocabulo del quale al presente si tratta, cioè
“autoritade”: per che si può vedere che “autoritade”
vale tanto quanto “atto degno di fede e
d’obedienza”. [Onde, con ciò sia cosa che Aristotile
sia dignissimo di fede e d’obedienza,] manifesto è
che le sue parole sono somma e altissima autoritade.
(5) The other source from which “author” derives, as
Uguccione attests in the beginning of his book
Derivations, is a Greek word pronounced “autentin”
which in Latin means “worthy of faith and obedience.”
Thus “author,” in this derivation, is used for any
person deserving of being believed and obeyed. From
this comes the word which we are presently treating,
namely “authority”; hence we can see that authority
means “pronouncement worthy of faith and
obedience.” Consequently, when I prove that Aristotle
is most worthy of faith and obedience, it will be
evident that his words are the supreme and highest
authority.
And Steven Kruger also finds in the principle of movement the key to the House of Fame and
the nature of imagination:
HYPOTHESIS: The House of Fame is Chaucer’s playful work of coming to terms with and
redeeming the “ful confus matere” (1517) textual authority by restoring it (waking it up in a
dream) to the movement of imagination as a truth truer than knowledge, i.e. to the actual
movement of knowledge itself as a spirit hovering on the boundary of the known and the
unknown, fiction and truth.
Finally, given that “time is the number of motion in respect of before and after” (Aristotle’s
definition of time, the most commonly cited in the medieval period), what does the House of
Fame point to with respect to the temporality of poetic knowledge? If truth is to be found only
in the movement of finding and not finding it, in the dream-like double circuits of imagination,
does it not bear a special connection and intimacy with the rhythms of verse, the “art poetical”
(1095) which Chaucer suspiciously states is only to make his “sentence” (1100) “sumwhat
agreeable” (1097).
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