Medieval Dream-Poetry

A 1976 study of the medieval English dream-poem, set against the background of classical and medieval visionary and religious writings and the theory of dreams from classical times down to Freud and Jung.

In this first general treatment of one of the most popular kinds of literature in the Middle Ages, Mr Spearing examines many specific poems in some detail and explores the nature of the visionary tradition in which medieval dream-poets felt themselves to be writing: he develops a theory of the dream-poem as a type of work in which medieval poets focused their own consciousness of the activity of creating imaginative fictions, variously and often ambiguously balanced between vision and fantasy.

The book begins with the early tradition of dream poetry in Latin writers such as Boethius, moving on to consider Chaucer, alliterative dream-poems, especially Pearl and Piers Plowman, and finally turning to late medieval dream-poetry.