The Poetics of the Elegiac Dream Vision in Middle English Literature By Benjamin S. W. Barootes Department of English McGill University, Montreal August 2014 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Benjamin S. W. Barootes, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract / Résumé …………………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………… iii INTRODUCTION Dream Vision, Elegy, and Late-Medieval English Poetry ……. 1 The Genre: The History and Legacy of the Dream Vision … 7 The Mode: Elegiac Poetry and the Dream Vision ……. 26 CHAPTER ONE The Doel-doungoun: Pearl, Elegy, and the Constraints of Poetic Consolation …………………………………………… 32 Pearl as Elegy …………………………………………… 35 Language and the Failures of Elegy ……………………. 43 Apostrophe and the Struggle of Elegy ……………………. 51 The Trajectory of Apostrophe in Pearl ……………………. 61 The Faunt and the Infantilisation of the Dreamer …….. 78 Correcting the Dreamer …………………………….. 88 The Two Languages ……………………………………. 94 The Eucharist and the End of the Poem …………….. 105 CHAPTER TWO “Now hit ys doon”: Lyric and Narrative in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess ……………………………………. 119 The Book of the Duchess and the Poetic Career …………….. 128 The Dream Vision: Lyric and Narrative …………….. 132 An Early Experiment: The Complaint unto Pity …………….. 137 Chaucer’s Troubled Narrator and Froissart’s Paradis d’amour 143 The Man in Black and the Trap of Lyric ……………... 153 The Knight, the Narrator, and the Move toward Narrative ... 167 CHAPTER THREE Death Framed by Love: Charles of Orleans’ Fortunes Stabilnes 179 Charles of Orleans: Prince and Poet ……………………. 182 The Poem: Its Content, Structure, and Use of the Dream Vision Genre …………………………………… 186 Charles’ Dream of Age …………………………………… 197 The Dream of Venus, including the Vision of Fortune …… 202 The First Ballade Sequence and Poems of Absence ……. 211 The Grieving Lover: Songs of Mourning in the First Ballade Sequence …………………………… 216 The Immediate Aftermath: Ballades 58, 59, and 60 …… 220 Ballades 65, 66, and 67: A Brief Dream Vision and its Counterparts …………………………… 225 Charles and Venus: Sharing the Language of Grief …… 233 CODA …………………………………………………………………... 238 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………... 242 i Abstract This dissertation examines how Middle English poets deployed the dream vision genre and the elegiac mode to explore the limitations of language and interrogate the art of poetry. Writing in the early decades of the vernacular literary tradition, these Ricardian and Lancastrian poets combine the ancient themes of mourning and the quest for consolation with the tropes of dream poetry developed throughout the late-antique and medieval periods. The elegist desires that language perform beyond its natural limits to transcend death and restore the lost beloved to the mourner. The flexibility of the dream allows the poet to probe the boundaries of language, and, in the best cases, to push his poetry beyond its usual constraints. In the first chapter, I demonstrate how the Pearl-poet uses the elegiac dream vision to investigate the constraints of poetic consolation and to imagine an elevated, celestial form of language that suffers from none of the failings of the mourner’s mundane tongue. My analysis of Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess shows the ways that the poem juxtaposes lyric and narrative forms of mourning and how the dreamer-narrator helps the sorrowful black knight move from the closed circle of repetitive grief to the vital progress of narrative. This shift, I argue, parallels the poet’s own literary movement from courtly lyrics to sustained narrative poetry. My third chapter, which focusses on Fortunes Stabilnes by Charles of Orleans, reveals how the poet renovates the love vision traditions to chart his dreamer-narrator’s journey through love, loss and sorrow, and the renewal of love following a successful process of mourning. The dissertation argues that the pairing of the elegiac mode and the dream vision genre was an important part of late-medieval poets’ efforts to establish and expand an English vernacular literature. ii Résumé Cette thèse examine la manière dont les poètes de l’anglais moyen utilisaient le genre onirique et le mode élégiaque pour analyser les limitations de la langue et s’interroge sur l’art poétique. Les poètes ricardiens et lancastriens, qui écrivaient durant les premières années de la tradition littéraire anglaise, combinaient les thèmes anciens du deuil et de la recherche de la consolation avec les tropes de la poésie onirique développés pendant la fin de l’antiquité et de la période médiévale. Les élégistes voulaient que la langue agisse à un niveau supérieur aux limites naturelles pour transcender la mort et ramener l’amant perdu au pleureur. La flexibilité des songes permet au poète de sonder les limites de la langue, et, dans des cas exceptionnels, d’amener sa poésie au-delà de ses contraintes habituelles. Dans le premier chapitre de ma thèse, j’expose comment le poète de Pearl utilise le songe élégiaque pour explorer les limites de la consolation poétique et pour imaginer une langue supérieure et céleste exempte des fautes de la langue terrestre, telle qu’utilisée par le pleureur. Dans le deuxième chapitre, j’analyse l’ouvrage Book of the Duchess de Chaucer, dans lequel je présente les façons avec lesquelles le poème juxtapose deuils lyriques et narratifs, et comment le rêveur-narrateur permet au chevalier triste de sortir de son chagrin pour solliciter la vitalité du récit. Je suppose que ce changement est parallèle au mouvement littéraire du poète lors de sa transition des poèmes lyriques aux récits poétiques. Mon troisième chapitre, qui concerne le poème Fortunes Stabilnes par Charles d’Orléans, présente comment le poète reconstitue la tradition des visions amoureuses pour examiner le progrès du rêveur-narrateur lors des expériences de l’amour, de la mort et du retour de l’amour après le processus du deuil. Ma thèse propose que l’appariement du mode élégiaque et du genre onirique fut une part importante des efforts des poètes pour l’instauration et l’élargissement de la littérature du moyen anglais. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, my sincere thanks go to Michael Van Dussen, who has supported this project since it was little more than the dream of a reluctant Romanticist. His guidance through the proposal and dissertation processes has been invaluable, and his generosity of time and intellect put me for ever in his debt. Thanks are also due to Jamie Fumo, whose graduate seminar introduced me to dream vision poetry. She has been a continual source of encouragement and advice. Conversations with Dorothy Bray helped to deepen my interest in medieval literature and taught me important lessons in collegiality. Friends in the English Department also deserve enormous thanks for their kindness, concern, and support these past six years. Joel Deshaye’s passion for the study and the teaching of literature continues to exemplify the pursuit of the intellectual life. Sir Ian Whittington has been a dear friend in scholarship, cups, and adventure. Ariel Buckley, who has suffered my humour and company more than most, has borne her burden with style and grace. Robin Feenstra kept me going with pep talks, late-night sessions, and the occasional piece of trumped-up flattery. Conversations with Naben Ruthnum tempered the said flattery, and his dedication to the craft of writing served as an important example throughout the course of the project. Amanda Clarke, Paula Derdiger, Justin Pfefferle, Matthew Milner, and Matthew Sametz have each helped me endure doctoral study and its corollary perils. My family, too, has provided strength and support these past six years. Thanks to my father Bryan Barootes, my mother Susan Weir, and to my step-mother Patty. To my grand-uncle Steve I extend my gratitude for sharing foolish morsels from his vast mental storehouse of poetry, song, and family fables; our discussions did much to keep me on the high road to reading. Financial support for this project came from several sources. Scholarships and bursaries from the Department of English, the Faculty of Arts, and a doctoral fellowship from the Social iv Sciences and Humanities Research Council have sustained me during my studies and allowed me to travel to three International Congresses on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo where my commitment to the field continued to develop. The Faculty of Arts Graduate Student Travel Award and a Department of English travel grant allowed me to present parts of my research at the New Chaucer Society conference in July 2012. A final word of thanks goes to Mr James Burton Armstrong, a man of great learning and inquisitiveness, who imparted to me a love of literature and has been a source of encouragement since the first day of Grade 10 English in the autumn of 1998. It is to him that I dedicate this study. By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us. Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable chain And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, “Thou art no Poet—may’st not tell thy dreams?” Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath vision, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream 1 Introduction Dream Vision, Elegy, and Late-Medieval English Poetry Writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, Matthew of Vendôme opens the second part of his Ars versificatoria, a manual for the composition of poetry, with a dream vision sequence.1 The narrator of the vision, who is not distinguished from Matthew the schoolmaster, relays a fictional dream in which he visits a verdant bower where “[f]lowers of every sort abound” (II.2).