Chaucer's Love Visions Essay

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Love Visions is an epic poem that also serves as prophecy. In his dreams, Chaucer flies to great heights on a golden eagle to the home of the goddess of sound, Fame. Furthermore on this fantastic adventure Chaucer sees the misfortune of Dido and Aeneas in real time. Both of these situations must be true without question, Chaucer does not prove to us that they must be real. In addition to this the reader must also believe that Cupid not only exists but actively tries to torment Chaucer. If all of this is to be true without question then why does Chaucer devout 4 pages proving that sound must go to the House of Fame? Chaucer or the golden eagle could just say that sound goes to the House of Fame without an explanation. The reason Chaucer writes a length proof of the whereabouts is to prove to himself and the reader that his dream is based on reality. This dream is not an ordinary dream, it is a prophecy. This dream of Chaucer’s has meaning associated with it but Chaucer cannot discern what it is. On page 64 Chaucer says, “Let him...Explain it [the dream], for my own mind draws no reason.” Chaucer has assigned the reader the task of discovering the

Even the first poem where most of Chaucer’s dream is from stories already, Chaucer keeps trying to convince us of its reality. Every time Chaucer sees in his dream something historic he cites his source for extra validity, “Whoever wants to know should read...Virgil, Dante, Claudian” (pg. 76). Throughout his poems, Chaucer connects his dreams to the stories of established authors. We similar citations in the logical deduction the golden eagle makes, “Such thinkings always found. In what philosophers expound! Aristotle, Plato too,” (pg. 84) Similar to Dante, Virgil, and Claudian the greek philosophers carry a sense of authority. The search for authority is why Chaucer devouts so many pages to his