Medieval English Literature: Medieval Dream Visions

Can an abundance of "melancholy humor" cause one to dream of black bears? Can dreams foretell the future? This course will encounter such questions in the popular medieval genre of the dream vision. Medieval writers used the dream to frame explorations of love, grief, history, writing, religious experience, political critique, apocalypse, and prophecy. We will encounter dreams about animals and dreams had by animals, men in love with flowers, flowers transformed into queens, and pilgrims seeking truth. As we make our way through the works of writers including Chaucer, William Langland, John Gower, and Christine de Pizan, we will also read about dreams in the Bible and in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and will investigate theorists of dreams from Macrobius to Freud. We will gamble, slightly revising Freud, that the interpretation of dream visions is the "royal road" to the understanding of medieval literature. Satisfies the Medieval requirement.