The Making of the Scottish Dream Vision

This book is about how Scotland responded to the dream-vision, Medieval Europe's most widely known literary form and precursor of the novel. Studies abound in Continental and English dream-vision writing: Dante's Divine Comedy, France's Romance of the Rose, and a host of English dream-visions, especially Chaucer. This book shows for the first time that dream-vision was a central aspect of Scotland's literary and intellectual culture across several centuries and languages. It therefore invites new understandings of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland.

Moreover, its innovative approach to the dream-vision itself looks beyond dream-poetry which is the sole focus of other studies of the genre. Instead, it shows how dream-vision intersected with prose and verse writings, with romance, chronicle, epic, theological works and more. In so doing, it yields a new angle of studying the dream-vision which could be applied to other nations, making this book significant to scholars of global medieval literature.

Kylie M. Murray, Fellow, Christ's College, Cambridge

After completing her first degree at St Andrews University with the Lorimer Prize for Scottish Literature, Kylie Murray completed graduate research in Older Scottish Literature, kindly funded by the AHRC and Scottish International Education Trust at Lincoln College Oxford. Next, she held a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship and Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, during which she identified Scotland's oldest secular book. Passionate about sharing the excitement of pre-Union Scotland as widely as possible, Kylie Murray is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker, and also gave the first ever British Academy Chatterton Lecture on an Older Scots poet.

Introduction
Understanding Dream and Vision in the Middle Ages
Approaching Scotland as Case Study
Chapter 1: Prior Engagements: Scotland's Early Reception of Dream and Vision
Historical Writing and Identities in Latin and Scots
Devotional Texts and Contexts
French Texts and Contexts
English Texts and Contexts
Chapter 2: The Kingis Quair and its Manuscript Context
The Kingis Quair: a new Scottish dream-vision
The Kingis Quair's Reception and Authorship
The Manuscript Context and Revisionary Readings of Chaucer's 'Dream Poetry'
Troilus and Criseyde in Scotland
Chapter 3: Bower's Scotichronicon and the Prose-Latin Dream-Vision
Mystical Visions: Katherine of Alexandria and Bridget of Sweden
Visions of Royal Scottish Sanctity: Margaret Canmore (1045-93) and Waltheof, abbot of Melrose (d.1159)
Visions as Reflection and Refraction of the Speculum Principis
Advice to All: Clerical Visions of Appetite and Greed
From Latin Prose to Older Scots Verse: The Reception of Bower's Dream-Vision
Appendix: Table of Dream and Visionary Narratives in the Scotichronicon
Chapter 4: Prophetic and Nationalist Dream-Visions
Thomas of Erceldoune and Envisioning the Scottish 'History of the Future'
Wallace's Nightmare
Wallace's Dream-Vision of Scotland
'Worthy Even of Enemy Praise': Wallace's Heavenly Ascent and its Afterlives
Chapter 5: Rethinking Scotland's Amatory Dream-Vision
Lancelot of the Laik: Dream-Vision Prologues and Arthurian Advice
From Courtly Love to Courtly Injustice: Henryson's Testament of Cresseid
From love at first sight to loss at last sight: Henryson's Testament and Orpheus
Anti- or Extra-Amatory? The Dream-Visions of Douglas and Dunbar
Epilogue: 'Mak vpwark and clois our buke'
Bibliography