Dream vision
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A dream vision is a literary genre, literary device or literary convention in which the narrator falls asleep and dreams. In the dream there is usually a guide, who imparts knowledge (often about religion or love) that the dreamer could not have learned otherwise. After waking, the narrator usually resolves to share this knowledge with other people.
The dream-vision convention was widely used in European literature from late Latin times until the fifteenth century. If the dream vision includes a guide that is a speaking inanimate object, then it employs the trope of prosopopoeia.
Dream visions have often been employed as frame stories, where the narrator claims to have gone to sleep, dreamed the events of the story, and then awoken to tell the tale. In medieval Europe, this was a common device, used to indicate that the events included are fictional; Geoffrey Chaucer used it in The Book of the Duchess and Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy exemplifies the conventions of dream-vision literature, though Dante specifically says that his Comedy is not a dream vision. In modern usage, it is sometimes used in works of fantasy as a means toward suspension of disbelief about the marvels depicted in the story. J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay "On Fairy Stories" complained of such devices as unwillingness to treat the genre seriously. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland includes such a frame, but unlike most usages, the story itself uses dream-like logic and sequences; most dream frames frame stories that appear exactly as if occurring in real life.
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Authors and works
Latin
- Alain de Lille, "De planctu naturae"
- Augustine of Hippo, "Soliloquia"
- Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae
- Cicero, Dream of Scipio
- Macrobius, Commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio
- Brother Marcus, Visio Tnugdali, or The Vision of Tundale.
- Henry of Saltrey, Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick.
French
- Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Roman de la rose
- Marie de France, The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick
Italian
- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy - exemplifies the conventions of dream-vision literature, though Dante specifically says that his Comedy is not a dream vision.
Old English
- Bede, Vision of Drycthelm
- Anonymous, The Dream of the Rood - the guide in Dream of the Rood is the Cross on which Christ was crucified.
Middle English
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, House of Fame, Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls - The Parliament of Fowls features a dream vision in which the narrator falls asleep while reading the Dream of Scipio and is ushered into a walled garden. He is chaperoned in the dream briefly by Scipio the Elder himself.
- John Gower, The Complete Works of John Gower
- William Langland, Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is an apocalyptic Middle English allegorical narrative attributed to William Langland, one of the great works of English literature. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step").
- Anonymous, Parlement of the Thre Ages
- Anonymous, Wynnere and Wastoure
- Anonymous, Pearl
- Kemp Owein, The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick in English
- The Vision of Tundale - from the Latin Visio Tnugdali.
Linking in in 2022
Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Allegory in Renaissance literature, Alliterative Revival, Aureation, Basil the Younger, Brian Merriman, Chanson d'aventure, Christine de Pizan, Conan Meriadoc, Dream world (plot device), Dream, Elizabeth Melville, Foebus abierat, Frame story, Geoffrey Chaucer, Glossary of literary terms, Glossary of literary terms, John Clanvowe, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Knight of Cups (film), Le Livre de l'Espérance, Le livre du chemin de long estude, Letopis (genre), Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint, Mum and the Sothsegger, Nazotokine, Old English literature, Parlement of Foules, Pearl (poem), Pluto (mythology), Roman de la Rose, Somnium Scipionis, Special revelation, Swapnatirtha, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland, The Great Divorce, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, The Record at Xiang King's Temple, The Sea-Bell, The Sleepers (poem), The Taill of the Lyoun and the Mous, The Temple of Fame, The Testament of Cresseid, The Thrissil and the Rois, The Vision of Adamnán, Thomas Blenerhasset, Valentine's Day, Visio, Vox Clamantis, Welsh literature in English, Wendell & Wild, Wendy Rose, Wetti of Reichenau, Wynnere and Wastoure
See also
- St. Joseph's dream
- Dream sequence
- Dream world (plot device)
- User:Jahsonic/Perhaps the ultimate and most underrated dream vision in the history of Western literature