Liberation of Late Medieval Dreams: The Case of a Feathered Sleeper
This study discusses the shift in medieval attitude to dreams and to the possibility of their interpretation as reflected in philosophic, theological, historiographical and literary enderings. It demonstrates how dreams gradually ceased to be treated in the original moral theological framework, which saw them as deceptive and unpredictable. It shows how the ambivalent medieval understanding of dreams, based on fascination by dreams and, at the same time, the anxiety arising from such fascination, gradually changed: dreams got liberated from this orthodox framework and became recognized as a natural human phenomenon. Using the dream motif in Geoffrey Chaucer s Nuns’ Priest’s Tale, the study documents this liberation of medieval dreams and their interpretation - which no longer represents a moral or dogmatic quandary, but merely a practical or intellectual matter.