Spearing - Medieval Dream Poetry notes

Spearing – Medieval Dream Poetry

Dreams are a space where we are freed from the constraints of daily reality and lived experience, and thus they seem to have a sense of hidden significance and possibility – medieval dream literature should be regarded in much this light. Dream literature in the medieval period seems to the authors themselves to constitute a separate genre with its own constraints and traditions, though it is disparate enough not necessarily to warrant that title.
It has several typical constraints of subject: ‘ideal and often symbolic landscape, in which dreamer encounters an authoritative figure, from whom he learns some religious or secular doctrine – also a poem which has (by fourteenth century) more fully realized its existence as a poem, i.e., the dream frame allows consciousness of the poetic form itself to weave itself into the poem.
The dream framework explains the existence of the poem – the dreamer, who is in some sense synonymous with the author, is at the center of the poem-subjectivity – the poem exists on account of the poet’s dream. This leads to a simultaneous creation and erasure of the author – he exists in that he has created the poem from his own mind, and yet erases himself as author by putting himself into the poem as a character. One of the typical forms this takes is the author putting himself into the dream and referring to himself by name, but often degrading himself in some manner in the dream-vision – for example, Chaucer in the book of the duchess is a bit of an idiot. However, the dream-poem becomes a way for the poet to express himself and his own creativity (rather than the other typical excuse for writing which is the appeal to authority – by writing a dream-narrative, the author can avoid the necessity of an authority because he is writing in the dream tradition).
Dreams typically take the form of a spiritual adventure, rather than an outward, physical adventure – this allows for deep probing of the mind and the spirit in a way other genres don’t allow. Macrobius, one of the first major writers on dreams, classified them in five ways – two which don’t matter and three which do. The first two are nightmares and visums, which have no prophetic significance, happen only because of the dreamer or in the liminal space between sleeping and waking. Then there is the somnium which is enigmatic, veiled and ambiguous, the visio, which is a true prophetic vision, and the oraculum, where advice is given to the dreamer by a wise authority figure. Most dreams (and most people’s opinions about dreams even now) would be put in the somnium category, as dreams in need of interpretation. Dreams are naturally like allegories, and allegorical figures feature prominently in many dreams – said figures are usually authoritative as well.
Dreams can also be Scripturally oriented, and Scripture itself has several examples of dream visions, including the book of Revelations, etc. This affects a lot of vision literature and leads to a common theme in medieval dream visions, which is the fate of the soul after death – or conversely, the dreamer may travel to the afterlife to receive from a now dead person (who by fact of having died is highly authoritative) some sort of knowledge or belief necessary to salvation. Dream visions also can be spent describing a certain place, such as heaven and/or hell (mostly heaven). This seems to be dealing with some sort of universal mental space or psychic archetype of what heaven might be – typically this is the ideal setting of dreams. Dreams in any vein like this seem to be highly didactic – the visionary goes on a spiritual journey during the dream in order to learn something of great importance.