Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer

Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer

Lenz, Tanya S.

Hardcover

Series: Cursor Mundi, Book 18

Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism

ISBN10: 2503534813
ISBN13: 9782503534817
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Published: Apr 18 2014
Pages: 222
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.40
Language: English
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.

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