Chaucer from Prentice to Poet: The Metaphor of Love in Dream Visions and Troilus and Criseyde

Appendix A: Parallel Structures of Duchess, Fowls, and Fame with its Tidings of Love

Appendix A Pre-dream Emotional state of narrator: lethargic, unable to discriminate, sad, suffers from insomnia. Pre-dream Emotional state of narrator: seeks knowledge, especially regarding “love,” later understood to mean “harmony.” Pre-dream Emotional state of narrator: perplexed over the variety of dreams and their causes. External influence: a book. Reads Ovid’s story of Ceyx, Alcione, and Morpheus. Learns that Morpheus governs sleep and sends dreams. External influence: a book. Reads and summarizes Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis on universal harmony. Still missing what he sought, but has something he was not seeking. External influence: a dream. Recalls and praises highly a dream he had on December 10. Sleep arrives from fatigue. Sleep arrives from fatigue, loss of light. Remembers he fell asleep “wonder sone.” Has a wonderful dream, impossible to interpret. Has the best dream anyone ever dreamed. Dream setting Dreams he awakens in a bedroom. Hears the harmony of birdsong. Walls covered with story of Troy, Roman de la rose. Dream setting Dreams that Africanus appears to him as a reward for reading Somnium Scipionus. Dream setting Dreams he is in Venus’s temple of glass. Walls covered with Aeneid showing destruction of Troy and Dido-Aeneas story. Horn summons dreamer to hunt led by Octovyen. Hart escapes; horn blows a forloyn. Digression on males false to women. Summarizes last six books of Aeneid in fifteen lines. Exits temple of Venus for desert wasteland. “Crist . . . Fro fantome and illusion me save.” Duchess Fowls Fame Parallel Structures of Duchess, Fowls, and Fame with its Tidings of Love 10 / Appendix A Guide Whelp, almost caught, leads dreamer to forest of artifice. Guide Africanus takes dreamer to gate leading to garden and Venus’s temple. Reward for studying the Somnium, revered by Macrobius. Guide Golden eagle swoops down, seizes dreamer, takes him aloft. Eagle: reward for faithful, albeit fruitless, service to Venus and Cupid, to increase his knowledge and his ability. Eagle lectures dreamer on sound waves, eventually depositing him at House of Fame. Symbolic alternatives Artificial Presentation of Love in Roman de la rose. Windows shut. Artificial forest, a locale that suits a man in black. Stilted use of language in poems and in speech of man in black. Symbolic alternatives Artificial Fearful words in black over gate. Temple of Venus’s allegorical figures, like statuary, mainly showing love’s sorrows. Artificial speeches declaimed by three tercel eagles who violate Nature’s law. Symbolic alternatives Artificial Sterile landscape outside glass temple of Venus. Fame’s castle and tower on a rock of ice. Fame’s caprice in assigning reputations. Busts of authors from the past, all associated with Troy legend. Natural Harmony of birdsong outside windows. Activity of the hunt. Dreamer’s use of direct, unadorned language. Natural Appealing words in gold over gate. Verdant garden outside temple of Venus. Birds of lower degree selecting their mates. Natural Actions and lessons of golden eagle. Agreement with intuitions of prior writers who explained the universe. Activity and sounds of House of Rumor. Parallel Structures of Dream Visions / 11 Resolution: Endorsement of natural representation Long, stilted monologues by man in black frustrate the dreamer. Mathematical tour de force: conversation between dreamer and man in black encodes harmony versus disharmony. At length, dreamer skillfully draws man in black to declare in plain language that his lady is dead . Resolution: Endorsement of natural representation Hyperbolic, stilted proposals of three tercel eagles fail to win a mate, while angering other birds. Mathematical tour de force: four encoded proportions of mathematics agree with the harmony of nature. Lady Nature approves lower birds’ selection of mates. A picked group of bird singers celebrates with a joyous roundel. All the birds fly away until next year Resolution: Endorsement of natural representation [“A man of gret auctorite” recites T&C, fiction about realistic lovers who grow from earthly attraction to harmonious perfection, then lose this ideal. [Mathematical tour de force: tension between rational and irrational triangle alludes to contradictory nature of Man. [Though Nature endures by successions, flawed humanity cannot. Criseyde and Troilus become permanent images of, respectively, humanity’s lesser capitulations and higher aspirations.] ...