Sleep and Its Spaces in Middle English Literature: Emotions, Ethics, Dreams by Megan Leitch

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sleep and Its Spaces in Middle English Literature: Emotions, Ethics, Dreams by Megan Leitch Carolyne Larrington megan leitch, Sleep and Its Spaces in Middle English Literature: Emotions, Ethics, Dreams. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture 40. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. Pp. 284. isbn: 978-1-5261-5110-0. £80.00. This is a lively and thoughtful exploration of a topic that seems to have been unaccountably overlooked in Middle English literary criticism. Dreams, generically [End Page 153] diverse and proto-fictional products of sleep, have been amply investigated without much consideration of the vital human process that is a prerequisite for them. Sleep proves to be remarkably interesting; as signalled by the subtitle, Megan Leitch's book thinks about it in a range of different ways. The book begins with an account of sleep as understood from medical—Galenic—perspectives, as explored in fifteenth-century health regimens. Sleep is understood as a phenomenon that can 'press the reset button,' allowing processes of digestion, humoral rebalance, and consequently, emotional calming to take place. The second chapter investigates the ethical dimensions of sleep. Notable here are the recommendations for 'proper' sleeping. One should sleep on one's side, not propped upright, or heaven forbid, grovelling on the stomach; sleeping position is indicative of the sleeper's moral state. Daytime sleep can be risky: it lays women in romance open to supernatural assault, and even Sir Launcelot, overcome by a desire for sleep in the noonday heat, finds himself captured and imprisoned by a quartet of sorceresses, bent on persuading him to choose one of them as his lover. 'Sloggy slombrynge,' as Chaucer's Parson's Tale characterizes it, signifies serious ethical deficiency, as embodied by Langland's memorable portraits of Sloth and Gluttony. Sleep and its places are everywhere in the canonical texts in Middle English literature. The Pearl -poet's work explores their implications in each of his poems: the disturbing dreams of Belshazzar in Cleanness; Jonah's capacity to sleep as a storm rages around the ship on which he hopes to escape his mission; the extreme mourning that sends the dreamer to sleep in Pearl; and the events in the Hautdesert guest-chamber. Gawain pretends to sleep as the lady slips between his bed-curtains, and his sleep is deeply troubled on the night before he faces his nemesis. Leitch offers many astute and well-argued readings of the meaning of sleep in these texts. The third chapter focuses on sleeping spaces, calling attention to the generic differences between sleep in romance, dream-vision, and fabliau. Leitch develops a persuasive argument that the lack of explicit reference to sexual activity in many Middle English texts is filled by euphemistic reference to private bedchambers. Various versions of the King Horn story, in its Anglo-Norman and English versions, reveal the different treatments of Rymenhild's summons of Horn to her bower, where she declares her love for him, and its aftermath. Sexual desire is thus displaced into spaces of sleep; to contemporary audiences, however, the implications of intimate exchanges in chambers would have been highly visible. Sleeping spaces are not only sites of possible sexual activity, as the many conversations between Pandarus and Troilus in the prince's chamber testify; the bedroom is also a space in which characters can give vent to turbulent emotions, weep, and lament, or, as in Chaucer's Second Nun's Tale, persuade one's bridegroom to convert to Christianity and live chastely. Leitch is careful to note the exceptional nature of such privacy; for royalty and aristocrats, the private quarters contain attendants, who may be confidantes—or spies. In the final chapter Leitch focuses on Chaucer's dream-visions, unpacking The Book of the Duchess and The Legend of Good Women to show how conventions around sleeping and insomnia point to a Chaucerian narrator who needs both healthful sleep and books to compose new works. Though Chaucer discusses Macrobius' theorization [End Page 154] of dreams in The Parliament of Fowls, Leitch makes a compelling case for a parallel Aristotelian understanding of dreams as equally caused by experience in the real world, especially by humoral imbalance. Though Pertelote's common-sense view of...