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Public Dreams and Private Myths: Perspective in Middle English Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Russell A. Peck
Russell A. Peck*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
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Abstract

Using Joseph Campbell’s aphorism “Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths” as a pointing device, this essay explores the resilience and breadth of medieval literature as it incorporates into a single purview many perspectives that seem incongruous to the literary taste of later times. The argument maintains that the presence of a common myth to which the society generally adheres accounts for most essential differences between medieval and modern poetry, affecting not only the multiple ways in which the language functions but also the relationship of poet to idea and poem, and the vigorous interplay between poet and audience. The essay treats half a dozen Middle English lyrics, a poem by William Carlos Williams, and a fabiliau by Guerin.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 1975 , pp. 461 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1975

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References

Notes

1 Paraphrased from Guerin's “Du Prestre ki Abevete,” in The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux, ed. Larry Benson and Theodore Andersson (Indianapolis: Bcbbs-Merrill, 1971), pp. 268–73.

2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1949), p. 19.

3 “Ars Poetica,” Collected Poems, 1917–1952 (Boston: Houghton, 1952), p. 41,11. 23–24.

4 Robert D. Stevick, ed., One Hundred Middle English Lyrics (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 35. Hereafter cited in text as Middle English Lyrics.

5 The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1957), p. 208.

6 “Spring and All,” Imaginations, ed. Webster Schott (New York: New Directions, 1971), p. 138.

7 City of God, trans. David Weisen, Loeb Classical Library, No. 413 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968), Bk. xi, Ch. ii, p. 431.

8 Monologion, in Sr. Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S.N. Deane (La Salle, 111.: Open Court Publishing, 1962), Ch. lxvi, pp. 131–32.

9 Hexaemeron: Collations on the Six Days, Collation 12, Par. 14, in The Works of Bonaventure, trans. Jose De Vinck (Paterson, N. J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970), v, 179.

10 Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Richard H. Green (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), Bk. iv, Prose 6, p. 92.

11 From J. Moignt's ed. of De Trinitate, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Vol. xvi, as cited by Frederick Goldin, Mirror of Narcissus (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 249–50.