ENL 5216 Fall 2020 Fumo

An exploration of the rich body of literature on dreams and dreaming in the Middle Ages, with a focus on the peculiarly medieval genre of the dream-vision. First we will investigate the relevance of medieval “dream theory,” via ancient and medieval discussions of physiology, psychology, and dream taxonomy. We will then engage two central traditions that shape the dream-vision genre—the philosophical and the courtly—as expressed in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Guillaume de Lorris’s and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, respectively. Building upon these foundations, we will spend most of the semester closely reading the most intriguing dream-visions produced in late medieval England, by the era’s three most accomplished poets (contemporaries in the second half of the fourteenth century): Geoffrey Chaucer, the anonymous Pearl-poet (aka the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and William Langland.

As we enter this eccentric community of erotic daydreamers, narcoleptic sinners, and chosen visionaries, we will consider whether medieval dream-poetry anticipates (or perhaps challenges?) “modern” ideas of subjectivity, personal experience, and psychology. Our concerns will include the intersection of dreaming with problems of literary representation; the engineering of the dream-form to critique literary tradition and/or contemporary reality; and the creative alchemy by which dreams become texts and texts become dreams. Middle English readings will be mostly in the original (with helpful glosses); relevant Latin, French, and Italian background materials will be supplied in English translation. No prior knowledge of Middle English is required; however, proficiency in Middle English pronunciation and comprehension is a formal goal of this seminar. This course will be of interest to medievalists and early modernists, but also to those engaged in the history of subjectivity, psychology, and/or the generally bizarre.