bodily representation”is ambiguous, and an“ultimately unlocalizable, inef-
fable body”produces“amentalutopia, literally a no-place in which vague
notions circulate but in which no representation of a governing, responsible
center is to be found.”^35 The dreamer, Guillaume-de-Lorris-style, follows this
seductive lure, suddenly“full fresche and weill besene / In serk and mantill”
( 45 – 46 ) like his French forebear. The other incentive offered, however, may
be more startling:
Go se the birdis how thay sing and dance,
Illumynit our with orient skyis brycht,
Annamyllit richely with new asur lycht. ( 40 – 42 )It is on this note that May performs herfinal farewell (“Quhen this was said
departit scho, this quene,” 43 ), concluding the poem’s opening movements
away from origin; the shifts through allusion and reflexion, thematized as
departures, elude occasion even for this poem that will reveal itself as
“occasional.” Terms such as “Illumynit” and “Annamyllit,” and the
Latinate“orient,”raise the real possibility that Dunbar’s poet is beckoned
into the garden by the image of his own style at its richest, allured by the
distinctive signifiers he has used elsewhere.
Given the uncertainties of Dunbar’s chronology, the claim that three
words would instantly announce a “signature” requires some caution.
There can, however, be little doubt that Dunbar’s poem shares distinctive
stylistic features–“aureate”Latinized diction, the metaphors of artifice, a
fascination with the textural play of color and light–both with his other
extended allegoryThe Goldyn Targe, and with Gavin Douglas’sThe Palice
of Honour, to be discussed later.^36 R. J. Lyall has interestingly suggested
a chronology on internal grounds: Douglas’s poem (datable to 1501 ) high-
lights the sensuous elements in this style, while Dunbar responds with a
critique of such excess inThe Goldyn Targeand then provides a ceremonial
compromise in the“authentically”transfiguring language ofThe Thrissill,
which honours a meeting between sensory nature and the supranatural
order in a royal union.^37 I will have cause to return to the question of
chronology; it is enough to note here the real possibility that the“depaynt”
May draws a dreamer clearly identified as a poet into this vision through
a captivating version of his own“Dunbarian” poetics. At the outset,
poet and poem, dreamer and garden suggest a desire circling through
the other of verbal artifice and body/garden to return to the subject,
through the transferred and improper to the proper, a movement estab-
lished both by the distant evocation of theRoman de la Roseand perhaps
by a self-citation.
34 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland