Through The Daemon's Gate: Kepler's Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs (Studies in Medieval History and Culture)

242 Pages·2006·2.83 MB·English

by  Dean Swinford

Studies in Medieval History
and Culture
Edited by
Francis G. Gentry
Professor of German
Pennsylvania State University
A Routledge Series
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Studies in Medieval History and Culture
Francis G. Gentry, General Editor
Pestilence in Medieval and Early Non-Native Sources for the
Modern English Literature Scandinavian Kings’ Sagas
Bryon Lee Grigsby Paul A. White
Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Kingship, Conquest, and Patria
Literature Literary and Cultural Identities in Medieval
Stephen J. Harris French and Welsh Arthurian Romance
Kristen Lee Over
Aspects of Love in John Gower’s
Confessio Amantis Saracens and the Making of English
Ellen Shaw Bakalian Identity
The Auchinleck Manuscript
The Medieval Tradition of Thebes
Siobhain Bly Calkin
History and Narrative in the OF Roman de
Thèbes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate Traveling through Text
Dominique Battles Message and Method in Late Medieval
Pilgrimage Accounts
Worlds Made Flesh
Elka Weber
Reading Medieval Manuscript Culture
Lauryn S. Mayer Between Courtly Literature and
Al-Andalus
Empowering Collaborations
Matière d’Orient and the Importance of Spain
Writing Partnerships between Religious Women
in the Romances of the Twelfth-Century Writer
and Scribes in the Middle Ages
Chrétien de Troyes
Kimberly M. Benedict
Michelle Reichert
The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy
Maps and Monsters in Medieval
The Medieval Roots of the Modern
England
Networked City
Asa Simon Mittman
Michael P. Kucher
Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky
The Epistemology of the Monstrous in
Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine
the Middle Ages
Victoria Sweet
Lisa Verner
“She, This in Blak”
Desiring Truth
Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer’s
The Process of Judgment in Fourteenth-Century
Troilus and Criseyde
Art and Literature
T. E. Hill
Jeremy Lowe
Through the Daemon’s Gate
The Preaching Fox
Kepler’s Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives,
Festive Subversion in the Plays of the
and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs
Wakefield Master
Dean Swinford
Warren Edminster
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Through the Daemon’s Gate
Kepler’s Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives,
and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs
Dean Swinford
Routledge
New York & London
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Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
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For Bill and Phyllis Swinford
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Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter One
Polysemy and Allegorical Signification 1
Chapter Two
Allegory and Movement 15
Chapter Three
Language and Its Limits as a Celestial Vehicle 29
Chapter Four
The Process of Stellification 45
Chapter Five
John of Salisbury’s Critique of the Dream Book 69
Chapter Six
The Journey, the Book, and the Dream:
An Overview of the Somnium 91
Chapter Seven
The Poetic Structure of the Circle 103
Chapter Eight
Kepler’s Allegories: The Somnium is not a Somnium 123
vii
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viii Contents
Chapter Nine
The Speech of Daemons 151
Notes 179
References 207
Index 221
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Series Editor’s Foreword
As the name suggests, Studies in Medieval History and Culture is a series of
studies in all disciplines dealing with the broadly-conceived, primarily Euro-
pean, medieval era. It is comprised of outstanding recent dissertations as well
as monograph-length studies. The editor also welcomes suggestions for essay
volumes focusing on an interdisciplinary theme. Thus it is open to scholars
at every stage of their careers.
The interest in Medieval Studies, which underwent a dramatically
broad renascence in the 1960s and 1970s, shows, even now at the begin-
ning of the 21st century, no sign of abating. Scholars, both junior and senior,
are consistently producing works of original research of the highest caliber.
Indeed, Medieval Studies enters the new century as fresh and vigorous as
never before. Just the merest of glances at the volumes already published
in Studies in Medieval History and Culture offers evidence to support this
claim. Previously published studies include analyses of individual works and
authors of Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personalities and events,
theological and philosophical issues, as well as new critical and theoretical
approaches to medieval literature and culture.
Great changes in teaching and research have occurred in the broad area
of Medieval Studies in the past several decades and continue to do so. Stud-
ies in Medieval History and Culture seeks to facilitate intellectual exchange
in the field by providing an outlet for scholars to disseminate the results of
their research, while at the same time pointing to and highlighting those new
directions that will shape and define ongoing scholarly discourse.
ix
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