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Reflections of Social Attitudes Toward Reform in Late Medieval and Reformation Dream Visions William A Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2010 "If We Shadows Have Offended": Reflections of Social Attitudes Toward Reform in Late Medieval and Reformation Dream Visions William A. Racicot Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Racicot, W. (2010). "If We Shadows Have Offended": Reflections of Social Attitudes Toward Reform in Late Medieval and Reformation Dream Visions (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1077 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED”: REFLECTIONS OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD REFORM IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION DREAM VISIONS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By William A. Racicot May 2010 Copyright by William A. Racicot 2010 “IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED”: REFLECTIONS OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD REFORM IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION DREAM VISIONS By William A. Racicot Approved March 23, 2010 ________________________________ _________________________________ Anne Brannen, Ph.D. Bernard Beranek, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Stuart M. Kurland, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English (Committee Member) ________________________________ _________________________________ Christopher M. Duncan, Ph.D. Magali Cornier Michael, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty Graduate School Chair, English Department Professor of Political Science Professor of English iii ABSTRACT "IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED": REFLECTIONS OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD REFORM IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION DREAM VISIONS By William A. Racicot May 2010 Dissertation supervised by Anne Brannen, Ph.D. 14th-century dream visions feature intensely personal narrators with attitudes and desires, who agonize over difficult situations, who make errors in judgment. Deeply characterized narrators contribute thematically to these poems, which explore personal subjects like grief and faith. By the 16th century, the form had undergone a thematic transformation from personal narrative to political allegory, losing much of its potency. The narrators use the dream vision structure in order to beg authority figures to forgive the potentially offensive statements made in their work because it was only a dream. Many narrators are ciphers, the eyes and mouthpieces of a theme rather than characters with personalities and goals. They observe situations more than manipulating them. Their dreams focus more on social than personal critique. As British ideology shifted from an internally-oriented belief in patient endurance and a deep-seated belief in hierarchal structures, to a more externally-oriented commitment to Reformation, the function of the dream vision underwent a parallel shift from exploring internal, personal themes toward exploring external, social themes. iv DEDICATION In memoriam ACL and as always for my mother. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION...............................................................................................................v DREAM VISIONS AND REFORMATION HISTORY ..............................................1 Historical Background .......................................................................................3 The Dream Vision............................................................................................10 THE PERSONAL NATURE OF 14TH CENTURY DREAM VISIONS ..................18 "Pearl" ..............................................................................................................18 Chaucer, "Book of the Duchess"......................................................................33 SOCIAL CRITIQUE & PATIENT ENDURANCE IN 14TH CENTURY DREAM VISIONS......................................................................................................................52 Langland, "The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman" ..............53 "Wynnere and Wastoure".................................................................................72 THE 15TH CENTURY – DREAM VISIONS IN TRANSITION ..............................82 Lydgate, "The Temple of Glass"......................................................................84 Skelton, "The Bouge of Court"........................................................................95 THE 16TH CENTURY - DREAMS AS DISCLAIMER..........................................109 Greene, "A Quip for an Upstart Courtier" .....................................................112 What Became of the Dream Vision ...............................................................130 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................139 vi I. DREAM VISIONS AND REFORMATION HISTORY Fourteenth-century dream visions such as those written by Langland and Chaucer feature intensely personal narrators, narrators with real attitudes and desires, narrators who agonize over difficult situations and choices and who sometimes make errors in judgment.1 Using such deeply characterized narrators contributes thematically to these poems, which generally explore very personal subjects such as grief and faith. Middleton expresses the interaction well: "the voice, and the human story to which it testifies, rivals the pedagogical progress, which [. .] forms the ‘plot’ as locus of meaning" (Middleton 110). By the sixteenth century, the dream vision form had undergone a transformation from personal narrative to political allegory, losing much of its potency as a genre. The narrators beg the authorities to forgive any potentially offensive, seditious, or even treasonous statements they might make because after all it was only a dream. These narrators tend to observe situations more than they manipulate them. The thematic focus of their dreams leans more toward social than personal critique. Many of these narrators are essentially ciphers, the eyes and mouthpieces of a theme rather than people with personalities and goals. In a very real way, the function of the dream vision shifts from exploration of internal, personal themes toward exploration of external, social themes. This is not to say that medieval dream visions feature no social critique. "The Vision 1. Middleton argues of Ricardian public poetry (a category in which she includes "Piers Plowman") that "the ‘voice’ presented by these poets is offered not as the realization of an individual entity, but as the realization of the human condition" (Middleton 109). This is her method of negotiating the need to take the narrator’s voice seriously without identifying it explicitly with the author’s voice, not an effort to deny the individuation of the narrator himself. In fact, during her analysis she discusses the worldliness and impatience of Langland’s narrator. That his voice in her opinion realizes "the human condition" supports my opinion that the lessons of self-modificaion and patience learned by the narrator are meant to be internalized by all of Langland’s readers. 1 of Piers Plowman" identifies numerous social problems – corruption in the secular and religious hierarchies, both – but Langland at no point endorses the idea that a citizen has the right to rebel against or modify larger social structures that he knows reflect Heavenly equivalents. In fact, after the name Piers Plowman appears in the list of rebels at the Peasants' Revolt, Langland revises his text in ways that clarify any confusion about the rights of citizens: Even if the cat deserves a bell, it is not the place of mice to bell him.2 Langland warns of corruption in the hierarchy not to rally his audience to social reform, but to warn them about potential pitfalls in their own journeys of faith.3 The transition in the attitudes of dream vision narrators toward social critique between the fourteenth century and the sixteenth is consistently parallel to an overall transition in social attitudes whose most visible barometer is the Reformation. As turmoil in the secular hierarchy and corruption in the religious hierarchy made it increasingly difficult to accept the great chain of being at face value, people began to question the extent to which social institutions were determined according to Heavenly models. That is, if, as the Wars of the Roses and other secular upheavals made increasingly 2. Middleton has the following to say, discussing Langland and Gower: "Both are inveterate revisers, and in both cases their revisions seem largely dictated not by formal considerations, but by matters of social fact and currency." She goes on to say of Langland specifically that "the Rising of 1381 probably gave a great deal of urgency to his effort to mend ambiguities" (Middleton 98). 3. Middleton’s argument that public poetry during this period addresses the entire community does not contradict the personal focus of the narrators of medieval dream visions. My argument related to what these poems communicate, not to whom they communicate it. That is,
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