Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare ed. by Peter Brown (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS117 ofoaktrees (sexual temptation) at the entrance to Hautdesert'; 'Claims that Nordic myth underlies G, for Morgan and the Green Knight are analogous to Odin (god of magic and runic wisdom)'; Argues that the dreamer sees maidens (virgins) in his vision, all ofwhom are dead.' After reading Blanch's admirably exhaustive update ofAndrew's bibliography, one yearns for a guide that selects from them what is actually worth reading: I am sure it would be much shorter. AD putter University of Bristol peter brown, ed., Reading Dreams: The Interpretation ofDreamsfrom Chaucer to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp.194, isbn: 0-19-818363-1. $65. This book ofessays gave its contributors the opportunity that every scholar ofa certain age dreams of: a forum for reexaminingand revising her or his earlierwork. Three ofthe seven essayists here—A.C. Spearing, Steven Kruger, and Kathryn Lynch—published important monographs on dreams and literature between 1976 and 1992, and the other four—Peter Brown, David Aers, Peter Holland, and Kathleen McLuskie—have dealt with dreams in essays and elsewhere. The revision ofolder sdiolarship creates an odd effect in the collection: the reader has the sense that each critic is dting the work of others who appear in the volume while those other critics are modifying the very ideas that the first critic is citing. However, inasmuch as the average user ofthe book is likely to read only an essay or two, few readers will fed this disorientation. Editor Peter Brown has commendably ceded his prerogative to write the conventional introductoryencomium praising the essays in his collection; instead, he has contributed an article that, like all ofthe others, comes under the scrutiny ofAC. Spearing in a valuable introduction that presents a witty, thought-provoking dialectical engagement with the essays that follow, especiallyas they relate to his bookMedievalDreamPoetry. It is a rare pleasure to see an introduction that challenges the material that it introduces. Brown's 'On the Border of Middle English Dream Visions' attempts to historicize the readingofthese texts byanalyzing those that attend to the liminal moment between consciousness and sleep. Brown believes that this threshold marks a state ofreadiness and receptivity before an altered state ofconsciousness...develop[s]' (40), andjust as the waking world will be reflected in the dream, the dream will reflect back on reality and then modify that reality when the dreamer wakens. He elaborates upon Krugers term of'berweenness' and brings to bear upon it Edith andVictorTurner's theoryofliminality, providing some ofthe essay's most fruitful speculations. In 'Medical and Moral Authority in the Late Medieval Dream,' the longest chapter in the book, Steven Kruger discusses early medical models ofdream interpretation suggesting that dreams could reveal symptoms of disease before the waking consciousness was aware ofthem. In light ofthese theories the central figure's dream in Henryson's Testament ofCresseid 'merges a religious, moralizing language with a ll8ARTHURIANA medical, physicalizing one' whereby 'moral ideology...is naturalized.' This material leads into a discussion ofthe ways in which the narrator's ambivalent experience in theAlcyone episode in Chaucer's Book oftheDuchessaffects his dream in 'failfing] fully to carry through a corrective specification ofthe narrator's position in relation to gender and sexuality.' Although Spearing faults Kruger for failing to look beyond the medical perspective to other social and cultural factors that inform dream poetry, the narrow focus ofthis essay also makes it the most daring and interesting in the collection. The centralword in DavidAers's 'InterpretingDreams: Reflectionson Freud, Milton, and Chaucer' may well serve as a modesty topos for a diapter that weaves together the notions that male readers need to dominate and subjugate the experiences ofothers— especially women—and that the alterity ofthe Middle Ages remains overstated in the scholarly imaginary, especially that ofnon-medievalists. 'Baring Bottom: Shakespeare and the Chaucerian Dream Vision,' Kathryn Lynch's devercontribution to the volume, analyzesA MidsummerNight'sDream as Shakespeare's 'reading ofChaucer [as] a reading ofa reading ofan already sophisticated tradition of readings [sic];' the playwright thereby 'parodies and revises the medieval dream-vision tradition.' Lynch successfully proves that both authors use the dream-vision as 'a form that embodies the infinite regressiveness of language and its self-undermining deconstruction,' but this assertion maystrike...