Dream vision
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Dream vision is a literary genre, literary device, or literary convention, in which the narrator falls asleep and dreams. In the dream there is usually a guide, who imparts knowledge (often about religion or love) that the dreamer could not have learned otherwise. After waking, the narrator usually resolves to share this knowledge with other people. If the Dream Vision includes a Guide that is a speaking inanimate object, then it employs the trope of prosopeia (prosopopoeia).
The dream vision convention was widely used in European Literature from late Latin times until the fifteenth century. Boethius in his De consolatione philosophiae “The Consolation of Philosophy” was most probably the first to use this form. His work, composed in alternate passages of verse and prose, was written while he was imprisoned (circa 524)
[edit] List of Authors/works
Latin
Alaine de Lille. "De planctu naturae"
Augustine of Hippo "Soliloquia"
Boethius. De consolatione philosophiae
Macrobius. In Somnium Scipionis
French
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la rose.
Italian
Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy
Old English
Anon. The Dream of the Rood
Middle English
Chaucer, Geoffrey Legend of Good Women House of Fame
Gower, John The Complete Works of John Gower
Langland, William. Piers the Plowman
Anon. Parlement of the Thre Ages
Anon. Wynnere and Wastoure
[edit] Examples of Dream Vision Literature
- Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is an example of the conventions of Dream Vision literature; however Dante specifically tells his reader that his Comedy is not a dream vision.
- The Old English Poem, Dream of the Rood, is another example. Unlike Dante, whose guide is Virgil, a real person, the guide in Dream of the Rood is the Cross on which Christ was crucified.
- Piers Plowman (w. ca. 1360–1399) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is the title of an apocalyptic Middle English allegorical narrative attributed to William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step"). Piers is considered one of the early great works of English literature.
- The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer features a dream vision in which the narrator falls asleep while reading the Dream of Scipio until he is ushered into a walled garden. He is chaperoned in the dream briefly by Scipio the Elder himself.
