Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer (Cursor Mundi)

This book is about the social understanding and treatment of the mentally ill, incompetent, and disabled in late medieval England. Drawing on archival, literary, medical, legal, and ecclesiastic sources and studies, the volume seeks to present a coherent picture of society’s treatment, protection, abuse, care, and custody of the incapacitated. Although many medieval stories stereotyped the mad (most often as sinners or innocents), for example, there is clear evidence that English society treated and cared for the impaired on a person-by-person basis. The mentally incapacitated were not lumped into one category and not ignored or sent away; on the contrary, both the English administration and the public had many categories and terms for mental conditions, cognitive abilities, and levels of physicality (violence) associated with impairment. English society also had safeguards and assistants (keepers, custodians, guardians) in place to help mentally impaired persons in life. This study therefore eschews totalizing assumptions about a societal ‘core’ and its ‘margins’; instead, it instigates a new consideration of communities as holistic entities with an ebb and flow among the contributing and non-contributing elements as people live, grow, age, get sick, become well, have children, break bones, or live with mental or physical impairments. This groundbreaking volume explores the intersection of dreams, medicine, and literary practice in the poetry of Chaucer and influential literary works from antiquity through the late fourteenth century. An introductory exploration considers topics such as Asclepian dream healings of ancient Greece, Old English poetry, medieval mystics, and foundational works by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Macrobius, and others. Detailed analyses of a series of Chaucer’s poems follow. Frequently incorporating and commenting on antecedent works, these late medieval poems span various genres including the dream-vision, the romance-tragedy, and the comic tale. Dreams and medicine are woven into the fabric of these texts, the author contends, revealing distinct and often surprising insights. One such insight is the ‘double potential’ of literary practice, medicine, and dreams - that is, each is capable of facilitating healing and wholeness yet equally capable of causing harm and disease. Ultimately, this book shows that the joining together of medicine and dreams constitutes a vital dimension of these key works in Western literature - one that reveals a profound connection between literature and the fundamentally human experiences of disease, healing, and dreaming Front Matter ("Contents", "Illustrations", "Acknowledgements"), p. i Introduction, p. 1 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00112 1. Sources of Social and Cultural Perceptions, p. 15 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00113 2. Legal Opinions of Mental Ability, p. 31 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00114 3. Determining Insanity, p. 63 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00115 4. Investigating Competence, p. 91 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00116 5. Criminals, p. 109 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00117 6. Protecting Inheritances, p. 141 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00118 7. Royal Prerogative Wardship, p. 161 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00119 8. Guardians, p. 183 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00120 9. Medieval Wardship Ends, p. 211 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00121 Appendix 1. Terms used to Describe the Mentally Impaired and Disabled in Medieval England, p. 233 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00122 Appendix 2. Records of the Mentally Incapacitated in Medieval England, p. 239 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.4.00123 Back Matter ("Bibliography", "Index of Medieval Names in Case Studies", "General Index"), p. 277