As the title suggests, in this study Mireille Demaules explores medieval dream narrative, including its connection to classical tradition and the associated question of dreams' reliability. Her study aims to accomplish for twelfth- and thirteenth-century romance what other scholars have done for epic and hagiography and in particular to argue that romance makes extensive use of older dream traditions while also innovating. In examining the classical and biblical influence on medieval presentation of dreams, Demaules establishes a vocabulary, morphology, and rhetoric for discussing how dreams are understood and used. She chose the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as her focus for several reasons: the abundance of dreams in this period and their use across multiple literary genres, the development of romance, and the changes that occur in how dreams are used during this period. The analysis especially concerns works by Chrétien, Marie de France, and Renaud de Beaujeu, as well as the entire Lancelot-Grail cycle, and culminates in an extensive analysis of dreams in the Roman de la Rose, where Demaules weaves together the topics treated in earlier chapters to argue that Lorris' and Meun's use of dream traditions in the Roman both departs from and preserves received traditions.
Before she discusses medieval romance, Demaules devotes two chapters to background, first to establish the criteria for discussing dreams and second to review dreams in classical tradition. In chapter one (L'Ecriture du songe) she analyzes how dreams and related phenomena are characterized in French literature, especially through the thirteenth century. She begins by analyzing the vocabulary used for the various phenomena loosely labeled as dream (rêve) and the evolution of that vocabulary through medieval literature. In addition to this discussion of terminology (dream, vision, revelation, nightmare, hallucination), she also details the contexts (waking or sleeping) and implications (scientific, theological, literary) of the various terms, and she explores the sources and reliability of dreams, visions, and related events. After establishing the bases of dream discussions, she examines what medieval writers knew of classical traditions concerning dreams (chapter two: Songe et mythe dans le roman antique). Demaules starts with the classical dream tradition in part to counter a common misperception about the medieval world--that it constituted a period of ignorance between two periods of vibrant and rich intellectual activity. In her examination of the sources mentioned in medieval writing, she underscores that in addition to the Bible, medieval writers display extensive knowledge of Plato and Macrobius on dream, and of Homer, Virgil, and other major Greek and Latin writers whose stories nourished medieval story-telling. In discussing the classical and biblical influences, Demaules begins to highlight the differences in dreams according to the principles she established in the first chapter. Whether the event comes during waking or sleeping, comes from divine or malefic sources, is reliable or deceptive--all of these distinctions begin to matter in her exposition of dream tradition. Demaules argues that in the twelfth century romans d'antiquité, dream becomes a way to convey major classical myths (especially the Judgment of Paris, the myth of Oedipus, and the myth of Narcissus) and foundational stories of the origins, loves, and deaths of legendary figures.
After these foundational chapters, Demaules devotes four chapters to twelfth- and thirteenth-century romance, especially the matière de Bretagne. In chapter three (Songes et mensonges dans la littérature courtoise des XIIe et XIIIe siècles), Demaules explores how courtly literature responds to the problems of veracity in dream material. The role of the fantastic or marvelous in courtly literature reveals an interest in non-rational material along with a wariness about its reliability. Because courtly literature does not obey the religious demands of hagiography or the epic, it uses dream to suggest the inferiority or irrationality of dream information. Demaules explains this attitude in part by recalling that courtly figures are oriented toward action and adventures of the daytime; by contrast, sleep and inactivity in the Christian medieval world suggest sloth and vulnerability to malefic influences. The frequent rhyme songe/mensonge in narrative poetry underscores this distrust of dream. Nevertheless, romance begins to exploit the ambiguities and fantastic traits of dream to convey the conscious and unconscious preoccupations of the courtly lover. For example, Demaules analyzes Yseut's dream in Béroul's Tristan to illustrate the interplay of these facets of dream.
The discussion then turns to the Lancelot-Grail cycle, where Demaules develops her analysis of how dream material changes in the thirteenth century. She presents a two-part discussion that treats first the shift from classical to biblical tradition (chapter 4, Songe et vérité religieuse) and secondly the interpretation of dreams (chapter 5, Interprètes et interprétation). Here truthful dreams and visions serve not only to announce the future but also to advance the cycle's religious agenda concerning the superiority of Christian faith and the importance of evangelizing or marginalizing non-believers. In this context, medieval attitude toward dream, in Demaules' analysis, distinguishes between events that originate in the human imagination and are therefore unreliable, and those that come from God and reinforce the relationship between God and the faithful. The royal dream plays an especially important role in the grail legend because of the importance of lineage and destiny, themes that culminate in the figure of Galahad and support his role as the flawless knight who will end the adventures of Logres and return the grail to the east. Essentially in this cycle, "songe" signals truth and thus continues the dream traditions of hagiography, chronicle, and epic. At the same time, dreams take on forms already familiar from the Bible and convey divine messages. Chapter five focuses on the means by which meaning in dreams becomes clear, on the figures and strategies by which the writer presents the dream's meaning to the audience and the dreamer. Demaules sees this discussion as the partner to the previous discussion concerning the meaning-laden dream intended to be taken seriously. She distinguishes learned from religiously-inspired dreams. Again, biblical tradition contributes greatly to this aspect of medieval dream literature, given the association between dream and prophecy in the Grail legend. The discussion ranges through figures who interpret the dream, the context of the interpretation, specific symbols and animals and their meaning (the "language" of dream symbolism).
Given that dreams frequently demand interpretation, Demaules then turns to the question of whether their use in romance sets up a conflict of narrative principles, between the sacred or ritualistic needs of dream tradition and the narrative and secular needs of romance (chapter six: Songe et vérité romanesque). She argues that dreams in romance provide the author another tool for developing character because of their potential for revealing secrets and conflicts as characters dream of each other. This leads Demaules into an analysis of who dreams and who figures in the dreams within Arthurian romance in particular. Lancelot occupies a special position in this discussion because he is the only character who appears as the object of dreams in all works of the Lancelot-Grail cycle and because the dreams about him add to the full exposition of his role and personality. She spends considerable time on lovers' dreams, followed by dreams that involve family pairs (husband and wife, father and son, for example). She concludes that dreams not only provide content but also contribute to the structure of the entire cycle by connecting content across individual works and by revealing relationships among characters.
In her concluding chapter (Une Mutation esthétique décisive: Le Roman de la Rose), Demaules applies all of her previous analysis to this great dream work and argues that its composition marks a turning point in the history of dream literature and in development of medieval narrative. In particular, Demaules characterizes the Roman as "le récit autobiographique d'un rêve prophétique" (512), a judgment that underscores the complexity of the narrative: the dream happened five years earlier and its narration is completed in a different authorial voice than that which began it; the dream is prophetic in that the narrative concludes with the accomplishment of the desired act. Demaules carefully details the innovative uses of dream in the Roman: dream serves as the entire frame for the narrative rather than as the vehicle for an episode inserted to an otherwise waking narrative; content is both autobiographical and anonymous, both courtly story and allegory; dream unifies the two parts of the work rather than simply connecting one to the other; dream geography assures easy transition between real and symbolic; plant-based symbolism takes the place of the more traditional animal-based dream symbolism. As Lorris and Meun exploit the various ambiguities about the truth or falsity of dream and develop the complex symbolism of the desired lady as rose and garden, Meun in particular expresses material otherwise likely to attract ecclesiastical censure by transforming the love quest into a sort of pilgrimage toward the shrine of the dreamer's affection. Between them, the two authors make effective use of numerous facets of dream tradition--dream as a fantastic out-of-body experience or as an experience grounded on the aspirations of human desire; dream as truth expressed symbolically or as deception based on human frailties; dream as an experience that draws its reality from the narrator's desires.
Demaules' conclusion expertly recalls her major points. She reiterates that the vocabulary for discussing dreams and visions became secularized over time just as the biblical tradition of dreams and visions became less influential and the understanding of dream became less dependent upon a dedicated interpreter and more dependent upon allegory. From earlier tradition that considered dream a divine message to a human, dream became a product of the human imagination, a means to express courtly love and to reveal human psychology. Along with becoming more secular, dreams became "democratized." Originally the privilege of powerful figures in legend, history, or biblical tradition, by the thirteenth century, dreams occur to anonymous figures like the narrator of the Roman de la Rose and thus convey broadly human and unexceptional preoccupations. Demaules underscores the innovative features of the Roman as well as the authors' use of older traditions. Lorris exploited the tradition of dream as a mystical or divine event (here with the God of Love); Meun, by contrast, continued the philosophical tradition of dream as a path to metaphysical speculation. Lorris and Meun thus excelled as talented exploiters of multiple dream traditions and as innovators at an important moment in the evolution of narrative.
This massive study displays a solid grasp of the appropriate traditions, both classical and biblical, as well as a keen understanding of medieval dream tradition, across epic, chronicle, hagiography, and romance. The extensive discussion is supplemented with two appendices, one for the list of dreams discussed and another concerning biblical dreams. The bibliography is extensive and varied, reflecting the scope and needs of the analysis. And finally an index includes lists of dreamers and their dreams, authors discussed (classical through renaissance), and finally modern authors and critics of dream tradition. Demaules should be congratulated for undertaking such a complex topic and bringing a full understanding to it. At times the prose is unnecessarily dense, with paragraphs frequently extending to multiple pages. Nevertheless, the frequent use of subtitles and other chapter divisions provides a clear path through the discussion. The culminating analysis of the Roman de la Rose brings together the different threads masterfully and provides a helpful way to approach this important and complex work. Demaules' study provides an important contribution to the topic of dream literature and especially to the phenomenon within twelfth- and thirteenth-century romance.