Chaucer and the Love-Vision Form

Abstract

Abstract The literary form which dominates Chaucer’s Shorter Poems is that of the dream-vision: the Book of the Duchess,’House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls and the prologue to the Legend of Good Women all feature narrators who experience highly significant slumber. The main subject treated within the dream framework is love, though in the House of Fame as we now have it love-tidings are promised but not actually reported. It is appropriate, therefore, to provide a general discussion of these matters at the outset, before proceeding to consider the individual poems.