Dream Vision

Question 1

What is significant about framing a debate/dialogue within the dream

Answer 1

Will it reveal truth or empty meaning?

Question 2

How does Spearing describe experience in dreams?

Answer 2

1. freed from the constraints of everyday
2. we feel to have some hidden significance.”

Question 3

Which literary traditions influence medieval dream visions?

Answer 3

Roman, Pharaoh/Joseph, St John, Boethius (Philosophy).

Question 4

How did 14th-century poets differ from earlier vernacular storytellers regarding dream visions?

Answer 4

They were self-aware of their work as literature and sought to define its status to the audience, influenced by Italian literature.

Question 5

What is meant by the dreamer being “and is not” the writer?

Answer 5

There is a double effect

Question 6

What is significant when the dreamer crosses into the dream world

Answer 6

the dreamer crosses worldly and otherworldly realms, navigating a middle realm of humanness, exploring bodily and spiritual experience.

Question 7

Describe the typical setting locus amoenus in medieval dream visions.

Answer 7

Mediterranean landscape with sun, shade, flowers, meadows, birds, spring brooks (often fountains), and breeze.

Question 8

Boethius’ Philosophy promises To “fycchen fetheris in thi thought” (fetch feathers for your thought)

Answer 8

inspiring flight of the mind.

Question 9

What is the significance of Alanus de Insulis’s De Planctu Naturae (12th c) in dream vision tradition?

Answer 9

Bridges Boethius and later dream visions, showing supernatural inspiration, visionary confusion about Nature, and explicit (which later became implicit) links between human love and philosophical Nature.

Question 10

What is the significance of the phrase “that is don” and its variants in Duchess?

Answer 10

Used four times at potential resolutions or shifts, signalling false or true closure
Early ‘is don’ = false resolution
Later ‘was don’ (hart hunting’ - put’s White’s fate to rest
Final “this was my sweven; now hit ys don” fuses past tense memory with present tense creation of poem

Question 11

How does The Book of the Duchess link textuality and sleep?

Answer 11

The narrator falls asleep suddenly upon his book, implying divine intervention and a connection between reading, dreaming, and poetic creation.

Question 12

Who do White and the knight represent in reality

Answer 12

John of Gaunt and wife Blanche Duchess of Lancaster - but also symbolizing larger ideas beyond historical persons (like Maiden)
Poem thought to be commissioned by John - was read at memorial service 2yr anniversary of death
John rewarded Chaucer with grant of 10 pounds a year for life

Question 13

How do dead persons speak in medieval dreams?

Answer 13

Morpheus appears as body of dead Ceyx, Pearl Maiden only hints at child (died aged 2)

Question 14

How does the dreamer’s focus in medieval dreams sometimes differ from the actual message?

Answer 14

The dreamer may be selfish, focusing on figures like Morpheus rather than the core message (e.g., death as sleep), often misreading the dream.

Question 15

What happens to the dreamer’s grief in the dream (Duchess) his sorwes; / Al was forgeten

Answer 15

discuss syntactical placement, Passive Voice – “was forgeten” - dream done to him, temporary feeling

Question 16

What is the typical depiction of consolation in medieval dream visions like Pearl versus Chaucer’s dream poems?

Answer 16

Pearl offers a consistent, spiritually real dream world; Chaucer’s dreams are superficially disordered but ordered deeply, with symbolic puzzles like horses in rooms and naked on hunt

Question 17

How does Duchess differ from tradition in the figure of the dream

Answer 17

not dead person bereaved survivor
no supernatural revelation ‘She ys ded’ – completed when knight rides to castle when bell strikes ‘hours twelve’

Question 18

Discuss the endings of both dream visions (in terms of apocalyptic destination) A long castel with walles white, / Be seynt Johan! on a ryche hil”

Answer 18

apocalyptic heavenly city – unlike Pearl dreamer knight has found consolation OR hastens reunion
purity, dream perfection of ‘white walls’

Question 19

How does Chacuer adapt the original story of Ceyx and Alcyone from Ovid

Answer 19

Omits their metamorphses into seabirds as

Question 20

What is the significance of the “puppy miniature hunting hound” in dream visions?

Answer 20

It symbolises psychological hunting or pursuit, e.g., stalking the Black Knight

The dialogue of a psychological hunt

Question 21

What does the pun on ‘hert’ signify in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams
‘the dream-work strives to condense two different thoughts by electing… an ambiguous word which can suggest both thoughts’

Answer 21

Freud treats the dream as a kind of text—requiring decoding.
dreams allow contradictory desires to coexist in a disguised, palatable form.

Question 22

As a purely imaginary figure to whom purely imaginary things happen in a purely imaginary dream, evoking childlike sympathy and plain language.

Answer 22

G.L. Kittredge

Question 23

What distinction exists between the Romance clerk and the Dream narrator?

Answer 23

Romance relies on past evidence, omniscient, Dreamer is eyewitness and naive

Question 24

Discuss how the Dreamer attempts to solve the knight’s problems - misunderstanding the conventions of chivalric love

Answer 24

For, by my trouthe, to make yow hool,/ I wol do al my power hool

Question 25

How is dialogue shown in the Duchess

Answer 25

Overlapping narrator and knight speech

Question 26

How does Spearing explain the Dreamer’s narrative role?

Answer 26

The poet sometimes lets the Dreamer fade to allow the Knight’s speech focus, creating narrative ambiguity.

Question 27

What is the significance of the phrase “I trowe no man hadde the wit / To conne wel my sweven rede”?

Answer 27

There is no definitive solution to the dream; the meaning remains open and ambiguous.

Question 28

How does Pearl invert Macrobius’s oraculum dream?

Answer 28

It acts as an anti-oracle, presenting divine truth through a child rather than parent

Question 29

who is interested in ‘effects of transparency, translucency, and reflection’ in Pearl

Answer 29

Milliard Meiss

Question 30

How does Jung (post) interpret the child figure in dream visions?

Answer 30

‘a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole… it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere’

Question 31

Dreamer: 'Now were i biyonde these wawes, /I were a joyful jueler.’ what is Maiden's answer?

Answer 31

'to passe this water fre, - / That may no joyful jueler’

Question 31

How is grief depicted in Pearl through the figure of the “jeuler”?

Answer 31

The “jeuler” is limited by selfish grief and contrasts with spiritual transcendence beyond the water.

Question 32

Maiden; i am 'quene in blisse' Answer?

Answer 32

‘We leven on Marye’

Question 33

What does Spearing say about the Dreamer’s misunderstanding of heavenly hierarchy?

Answer 33

'naively measuring... one earthly rank against another' missing the paradoxical hierarchy of heaven revealed by the Maiden.

Question 34

How does the river haunt the poem through the form?

Answer 34

ABAB-ABAB-BCBC, Concatenation

Question 35

What does Romans 6 say about baptism?

Answer 35

Dead to sin, alive to God

Question 36

What biblical and symbolic significance does the river motif have in Pearl?

Answer 36

Jacob at the wadi of Jabbok, and the river of the water of life (Revelation).

Question 37

How does Pearl contrast human knowledge with divine knowledge using water imagery?

Answer 37

Human knowledge is errant and turbulent like “wallande water,” whereas divine knowledge is controlled and flawless like “rich rokkes” of mosaic gems.

Question 38

What do the “welle of Christs wound” and “brode wounde” rhymes symbolize?

Answer 38

The depth of suffering and love, referencing the spear wound and endless flow of blood and water.

Question 39

What is the emotional and spiritual significance of the dreamer witnessing the bleeding Lamb?

Answer 39

The dreamer’s gaze turns to his 'littel quene', overwhelmed by 'luf-longyng'

Question 40

'bot baysment habe myn hert a brunt

Answer 40

I saw her in so strange a place.’ 'brunt' = alliteration evokes the blow baysment = confusion - dreamer failiure to understand

Question 41

How does Piotr Spyra describe spiritual blindness in Pearl?

Answer 41

As a fundamental human condition only fully transcended by death.

Question 42

What philosophical acceptance does Simon Armitage attribute to the dreamer of Pearl?

Answer 42

‘he has arrived at a philosophical acceptance of his earthly predicament’

Question 43

How does the phrase “I slode upon a slepyng slight” function in Pearl?

Answer 43

The dreamer involuntarily slips into the dream, marked by soft, lulling alliteration, symbolizing transition from temporal to eternal.

Question 44

Fro spot my spyryt there sprang in space'

Answer 44

Spiritual ascent into the dream described - temporal to eternal, energetci rise

Question 45

How does the Maiden challenge the theme of mourning and divine truth? ‘Sir, ye haf your tale mystente/ To say your perle is all away’

Answer 45

3rd person - earthly grief misinterprets divine truth

Question 46

quote about classic medieval trope: the ineffability of divine truth

Answer 46

The derthe thereof for to devise/ Nis no wye worthy that tonge beres’ - rhetorical modesty -trust while acknowledging the speaker's limits

Question 47

‘I holde that jeuler little to prayse/ That loues wel that he saw with iye’

Answer 47

2 Corinthians 5:7 "For we walk by faith, not by sight."

Question 48

What do the internal rhyme and harsh monosyllables in “Thy corse in clot mot colder keve” evoke? (to cross the water)

Answer 48

The dark, grave reality of death.

Question 49

What serves tresor bot gares men grete, / When he hit schal eft with tenes tyne’

Answer 49

Grief continues after the dreamer awakes in Pearl

Question 50

What does the heraldic term “mascle” symbolize in Pearl?

Answer 50

A spotless, unblemished shield or body, representing purity free from sin - the only way to cross the river

Question 51

What type of bird is the dreamer compared to?

Answer 51

'dased quayle' - hunted bird

Question 52

In Pearl, what does the passage "For I dar say, with conscience sure, / Had bodyly burn abiden that bone, / Thagh alle clerkes him had in cure, / His life were lost anunder mone" suggest about human capacity to experience divine truth?

Answer 52

a mortal body can't survive direct divine truth—only the spirit can endure it. Like Galahad in the Queste del Saint Graal, bodilhy revelation of the Holy Grail leads to death

Question 53

How does the dreamer’s wish “I wolde be there, / Wiyond the water” express longing?

Answer 53

A: Simple, aching language expressing desire to cross into spiritual reunion.

Question 54

How does the dreamer awaken in Pearl?

Answer 54

‘That brath out of my dreme me brayd.’ Then wakened I in that erber wlonk’

Question 55

How does the dreamer awaken emotions-wise

Answer 55

‘I raxled and fel in gret affray’