Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints

This edition anthologizes four fifteenth-century Middle English poems—three of which were previously attributed to Chaucer—that use dream-vision conventions to explore the theme of romantic love. Each features an unhappy narrator who secretly spies on the speech of lovers to inform his assessment on love. John Clanvowe’s Boke of Cupide relates a love debate between two birds, a nightingale and a cuckoo. John Lydgate’s Complaynte of a Lovers Lyfe features a knight complaining about the failures of his romantic life. The anonymous, Scotticized Quare of Jelusy follows a female newlywed, who rants about the influence of Jealousy on her husband. La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, Richard Roos’ English translation of Alain Chartier’s French poem of the same name, observes a debate between two lovers. Dana Symons discusses the development of the English love vision both within and independent of Chaucerian reception, and argues for decentering the dominant Chaucerian aesthetic in evaluating the courtly poems’ literary merit.