Scipioun's Drem
The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 09 May 2000
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2249

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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...

> <Click!! >
> 
> (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

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