THE ONEIRIC, INTERIORITY AND ETHICAL READING IN CHAUCER'S BOOK OF THE DUCHESSE
THE ONEIRIC, INTERIORITY AND ETHICAL READING IN CHAUCER'S BOOK OF THE DUCHESSE

Summary/Abstract: When the structural and thematic conventions of dream vision literature – the ambiguity of the dream’s origins, its revelation of divine truths, the allegorical illustration of its elusiveness – meets the genre so-called courtly love, Middle English literature sees a flourish of erotic visions, images of lovesickness and translations of courtly life into fabulous settings of classical inspiration. To them, Geoffrey Chaucer adds an emphasis on characters, in their typological and individual diversity, a consciousness of the literary tradition on whose shoulders he was standing and a positioning on the outside of the courtly looking into its stereotypes. Rather than glorifying divine revelations of morals of sin and virtue, his dream vision poems are centered on the experiences and the inner life of the dreamer whose reflexive autonomy helps him distance from these conventions. This study is a glance into one of Chaucer’s three main oneirical writings, Book of the Duchesse, from the point of view of visionary tradition and outside of it.

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