# Scipioun's Drem *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 09 May 2000* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Alice Turner *09 May 2000, 00:19* > Nigel wrote: > > Alga wrote... >>> I dug out Chaucer. "The Parliament of Fowls" is a charming >>> Valentine's >>> Day poem. The poet has been reading Scipio Africanus... > > > (What was that? Oh no, it was the sound of Nigel switching into > Mindless > Pedantry Mode...) > > Nothing to do with Crowley, and even less to do with Wolfe, but when > Chaucer writes in "The Parlement of Foules" that he has been reading > "Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun", he almost certainly means that he's > been > reading Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis" ("the > Dream > of Scipio"). "Tullyus" refers to Cicero's full name: Marcus Tullius > Cicero. You're completely right: "Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun." > Not sure I'd completely agree with the notion that the narrative tour > of > heaven and hell had completely died out by the mid-14th century... Depends > quite what you mean. It long persisted as a literary trope in various > forms, particularly in the various mutations of Renaissance epic, up > to and > including Milton, of course, in the 17th century. > > But maybe you meant something more specific. Yes, I did, sorry to be foggy. But you are once again right: post-Dante it beome a very popular literary trope. During the thousand years that stretched from about 400 to 1400, it was related as *truth*, however, by a surprising number of people. That's why I made the UFO reference. Thanks, Adam, for the page citations for LB. -alga ---