“bloodless martyrdom.” Recent scholarship emphasizes
the liturgical features of the poet’s thought, connecting
it to the physical artifacts on which it appears.
See also FURTHARK ALPHABET.
FURTHER READING
Ó Carragáin, Éamonn. Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images
and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradi-
tion. London: British Library, 2005.
Swanton, Michael, ed. The Dream of the Rood. Exeter, U.K.:
University of Exeter Press, 1996.
Shaun F. D. Hughes
DREAM VISION In dream vision poems, a
troubled narrator falls asleep, often by running water,
dreams, and wakes to write his dream down. The earli-
est English dream vision is The DREAM OF THE ROOD;
however, the genre reached its zenith much later. From
the late 14th century up until the early 16th century,
large numbers of poems were written with this format,
and examples are found among the most important
works of the three greatest poets of the late 14th cen-
tury. These include WILLIAM LANGLAND’s PIERS PLOW-
MAN, PEARL, and GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s four dream poems:
The BOOK OF THE DUCHESS, The HOUSE OF FAME, The PAR-
LIAMENT OF FOWLS, and The LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, as
well as his partial translation of the infl uential French
dream poem Le Roman de la rose (The Romance of the
Rose).
From the 14th century onward, the dream vision
tended to consist of an ideal, often symbolic, landscape
in which the dreamer encounters an authoritative fi g-
ure, from whom he/she learns some religious or secu-
lar doctrine. The phase of the poem before the dreamer
has fallen asleep often includes a very precise and
detailed description of the dreamer’s circumstances in
the real world. For example, at the beginning of The
House of Fame, Chaucer tells us that it is the “tenthe
day now of Decembre,” and in Pearl details of place
and date are carefully delineated. These details offer a
sense that the poet is describing something that really
happened. They offer verisimilitude but also invest the
dream with possible allegorical signifi cance: These
details may be personally resonant for the dreamer, or
they may represent an important and perhaps divinely
ordered conjunction. The setting is usually a natural
one, such as a garden, and it is usually spring or sum-
mer. One of the versions of Piers Plowman, for instance,
opens with a description of the soft summer sunshine,
while in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, it is spring.
In particular it is May, when fl owers bloom and birds
sing, glad that winter is over and that they have escaped
the hunter; in defi ance of the fowler, they croon love-
songs to each other. Similarly, the narrator of Wynnere
and Wastoure (14th century) wanders in bright sun-
light along the bank of a stream near a wood by a
meadow at the beginning of his adventure. Along with
the time of year, the landscape is often a LOCUS AMOE-
NUS, a paradise of woods, streams, and fl owers.
Although “paradise” is a typical dream-vision set-
ting, there is an alternative setting in which the dreamer
falls asleep—the bedroom. For instance, in Chaucer’s
early dream poem, The Book of the Duchess, the narra-
tor, unable to sleep, calls for a book “To rede and drive
the night away” and then falls asleep alone, separated
from social activity. Sometimes the dreamer can seem
to be on the brink of death. Langland’s narrator has
grown weary of the world; the dreamer in The Book of
the Duchess fears his own death. The solitude and
insomnia express the dreamer’s mental and emotional
condition. The beginning of the dream fi nds the
dreamer preoccupied and anxious, though he or she is
not always able to articulate the cause of the anxiety.
The PEARL-POET (see GAWAIN-POET) is in grief for his
infant daughter, but the causes of the sufferings of
Chaucer’s dreamers are not always clear. The narrators
are thus in a highly receptive state at the moment of
transition between the waking world and the dream
state, and the dream allows for confrontation with the
self and its preoccupations and for a process of self-
realization to take place.
Once asleep, the dreamer usually fi nds himself or
herself in a changed landscape, populated by fi gures of
authority, such as Holy Church in Piers Plowman.
Before the onset of the dream, the narrator seems to be
fl oundering in a world bereft of meaning; in the dream,
his or her actions seem to be full of signifi cance, some-
times even allegorical signifi cance. The dreamer relin-
quishes personal control and submits to the infl uence
of powers beyond him. It is then that the dreamer seesDREAM VISION 151