Dream vision

Dream vision
Boethius in prison

Contents

A dream vision is a literary device in which a dream is recounted for a specific purpose. While dreams occur frequently throughout the history of literature, the dream vision emerged as a poetic genre in its own right, and was particularly popular in the Middle Ages. This genre typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts his experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking. The dream, which forms the subject of the poem, is prompted by events in his waking life that are referred to early in the poem. The ‘vision’ addresses these waking concerns through the possibilities of the imaginative landscapes offered by the dream-state. In the course of the dream, the narrator, often with the aid of a guide, is offered perspectives that provide potential resolutions to his waking concerns. The poem concludes with the narrator waking, determined to record the dream – thus producing the poem.

The dream-vision convention was widely used in European literature from late Latin times until the fifteenth century.

Authors and works

Latin

French

Irish

  • The aisling is a genre of dream poetry in Irish literature.

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

Welsh

  • Anonymous, The Dream of Rhonabwy – possibly a satire on the medieval dream vision
  • Anonymous, The Dream of Macsen Wledig



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Look at other dictionaries:

  • dream vision — (dream allegory)    The dream vision was a favorite genre of medieval narrative poetry, in which a narrator falls asleep and dreams what becomes the main body of the story. Often the dream was in the form of an ALLEGORY, or was otherwise… …   Encyclopedia of medieval literature

  • dream vision — noun 1. : a poetic framework especially popular in medieval literature in which the poet pictures himself as falling asleep and envisioning in his dream a series of allegorical people and events 2. : a poem utilizing the dream vision * * * a… …   Useful english dictionary

  • dream vision — a conventional device used in narrative verse, employed esp. by medieval poets, that presents a story as told by one who falls asleep and dreams the events of the poem: Dante s Divine Comedy exemplifies the dream vision in its most developed form …   Universalium

  • dream vision — noun Date: 1906 a usually medieval poem having a framework in which the poet pictures himself as falling asleep and envisioning in his dream a series of allegorical people and events …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • dream allegory — dream allegory, = dream vision. (Cf. ↑dream vision) …   Useful english dictionary

  • sleep dream vision —    A term used to denote a dream image occurring in the visual modality.    References    Mavromatis, A. (1987). Hypnagogia. The unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. London: Routledge …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Dream of the Rood, The — (ca. eighth century)    Perhaps the best known of the religious poems and sermons that make up the 10th century OLD ENGLISH manuscript called the VERCELLI BOOK, The Dream of the Rood is a DREAM VISION (the oldest such poem in English), in which a …   Encyclopedia of medieval literature

  • dream — Synonyms and related words: Miss America, Walter Mitty, absence of mind, absentmindedness, absorption, abstractedness, abstraction, ace, ache, airy hope, airy nothing, aspiration, assume, autism, bad dream, bathing beauty, be absent, be afraid,… …   Moby Thesaurus

  • dream —    Also known as sleep dream, night dream, and nocturnal dream. All four terms are used interchangeably to denote an endogenously mediated perceptual experience occurring physiologically during sleep. Dreaming can be defined as the creation of… …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Dream of Rhonabwy, The — (Breudwyt Rhonobwy) (ca. 1220)    The Dream of Rhonabwy is an early 13th century Welsh prose tale found among the tales of the MABINOGION in the 14th century manuscript known as the Red Book of Hergest. Other manuscripts of the Mabinogion do not… …   Encyclopedia of medieval literature

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