Dream Vision and Other Poems

Dream Vision and Other Poems Chaucer's earliest poem, the "Book of the Duchess," was believed to have been written for Chaucer's patron John of Gaunt after the death of his wife, Blanche, the Duchess of Lancaster. Inside of the poem, it is the Dreamer who is the voice of reason and the voice of consolation when he encounters the Black Knight in his dream.

The Black Knight is all intense emotion at the loss of his wife and the Dreamer and the Knight begin a conversation together that discusses the importance of love. The Dreamer and the Black Knight have a rough time of it at first in that they both cannot understand each other; eventually, they are more and more able to understand what the other is talking about.

Chaucer's Dreamer in the "Book of the Duchess" tries to offer the Black Knight some sort of consolation for his loss and the poem, as a whole, appears to suggest that humans must accept the fact that people die in this world; that is the only consolation one can find.

The reader gets the impression that though the Dreamer tries to offer his consolation to the Knight, there is no consolation when it comes to death and grieving; it is simply something that we must accept as being a part of the temporal world. The poem is about finding consolation in a world where love and death are imminent.

The Black Knight and the Dreamer engage in a dialogue where we get a feeling of Chaucer's need to tell us of the importance of courtly love (Fichte 38) before the poem goes on to tell us of the Knight's tragedy in losing his wife.

We are first made aware of the Black Knight's love for his lady when he explains how he feels in the following speech: 'Syr,' quod he, 'sith first I kouthe / Have any maner wyt fro youthe, / or kyndely understondyng / to comprehende, in any thyng / What love was, in myn owne wyt, / Dredeles, I have ever yit / Be tributarye and yiven rente / to Love, hooly with good entente, / and through plesuance become his thral / With good wille, body, hert, and al (Chaucer 11 759-768).

In the speech above, the Knight explains that ever since he was young and could have any comprehension of what love is, he has tried to pay tribute to that love with the best intentions possible. It has been with pleasure that he has given his body, heart and soul to love, treating love as his Lord. It is this speech, this outpouring of emotion for his wife, that Chaucer uses to explain how very important love is to the person in love.

He has treated love as his Lord, which means that he has worshipped his lady in the temporal world. Now what is he supposed to do that she is gone? This is what mankind struggles with. The Dreamer understands that the Knight is grieving for his wife and thus he tries to offer him some sort of consolation.

The consolation that Chaucer offers is both clever and subtle; it is not direct and the reader has to have an interpretation of consolation in mind (Phillips 1), it seems, if he or she is to find it or to understand what Chaucer is trying to do via his Dreamer. Chaucer basically offers an idea of the acceptance of the temporal quality of the world and how that relates to life and love.

This can also be seen as a lack of consolation; however, in this lack of consolation he is admitting that there is no consolation and that that fact alone should act as a consolation. The man is destined to grieve for his wife as this is how the temporal world works. There is no consolation for the grieving. There is not one of the two characters whom find any kind of consolation, though it is clear that the Dreamer is quite taken with the dream.

We aren't able to say what happens next -- after he wakes up; however, it is somewhat accepted that the Dreamer and the Black Knight are a bit closer to making peace with their situations. Neither of them have been on a path that has led to any kind of comforting conclusion, but we understand that this journey has been something that they have needed. It has woken them both out of the funk that they were in.

The journeys of both the Dreamer and the Black Knight can be viewed as the way in which the reader reads the poem. Both are happening simultaneously. In the very beginning, we are not aware of how the Dreamer and the Black Knight's grief is affecting them. It is only through the Dreamer's questions that we are able to understand the Knight as he stops with all of his courtly descriptions (such as the speech earlier in this paper) and then cries out, "She is dead!" (1310).

It is this grief that he exhibits that pulls at our heartstrings as it is something that humankind can relate.