Dreaming in the Middle Ages.

Phillips, Helen

There are already many books about the history of Western attitudes to dreaming, and critical studies of dream poetry. This book has a narrower theme: the influence of late antique dream theory, especially schemes for classifying dreams hierarchically, on later mediaeval dream theory. Kruger makes this a history of asking questions about the provenance of dreams -- whether they come from inside the dreamer or a transcendent Beyond -- and about their significance, reliability and possible dangers.

His leitmotiv is the 'doubleness and middleness' of dreams: they are potentially transcendent and mundane, occupying a middle and mediating role in a hierarchical cosmology between the realms of body and spirit. He examines dream theories in relation to wider world-views: to Neoplatonic and Christian cosmologies, to beliefs about angels and demons, etc. The central section of the book begins with late antique 'Neoplatonic' dream theories of Macrobius and Calcidius, and patristic theories, in particular those of Augustine and Gregory. Kruger manages to cope with the self-imposed handicap of beginning his account only in the late classical period. There is an interesting analysis of Prudentius' Hymnus ante sommum (it typifies the book's focus that the only detailed discussion of Chaucer occurs here: a comparison between aspects of The House of Fame and Prudentius' Hymnus). He points out that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the rediscovery of Greek and Arabic medicine, and Aristotelian philosophy, encouraged greater acceptance of somatic explanations for dreams, and shows how writers like Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Holcot combined an interest in physical and moral causation. Kruger rightly observes that traditional accounts of dream theory often overestimate Macrobius' influence and ignore the extent to which dream theories changed and evolved.

Round the edge of this main study Kruger looks, in a stimulating but brief and eclectic fashion, at dreams in literature and modern popular and scientific attitudes. The chapter on 'Dreams and fiction' begins by admitting that dream theories of the academic type that Kruger has been chronicling do not represent important inspirations for dream literature. The literary examples he selects to discuss in the chapter are therefore an offbeat, if interesting, group, including Guthlac A, Strabo's Visio Wettini and Oresme's Tractatus. Most of the famous mediaeval dream writings, including the Roman de la rose, Machaut, Froissart, Piers Plowman, Pearl, Chaucer, etc., get only brief walk-on parts in this chapter or do not appear. This is because, true to his theme, Kruger centres discussion on the way in which 'Dreams, fictions, and mirrors all involve "higher" and "lower" forces' (p. 137). There are some perceptive observations on the motif of the mirror in, among others, Deguileville.

The last chapter, 'Dreams and life', begins by asking whether mediaeval autobiographies can answer the question 'How did real dreamers treat their dreams?' The two examples show the influence of literary tradition, rather than 'real life', in shaping accounts of dreams. Guibert of Nogent's dreams recall the role of dreams in Augustine's Confessiones, and Hermann of Cologne sees his changing understanding of dreams as a mark of his conversion from Jewish 'carnal' and 'blind' ways of seeing to Christian illumination after his conversion. Hermann presents to us an enigmatic dream experience, susceptible of interpretations, the 'higher' and spiritual, and the 'lower', mundane, reading. And that is where Kruger, abruptly, leaves his book (rather like the intriguingly unconcluded conclusions of many dream poems): the interpretative problems at the heart of Hermann's account 'stand as an appropriate emblem for the complexity of the medieval dream'. This is an appropriate last line for a study that is solid, perceptive and sensible on its central topic, and constantly offers its readers fascinating insights into avenues that lead off that topic into wider questions of religion and cosmology, literature and human consciousness.

HELEN PHILLIPS Nottingham