“That swevene hath Daniel unloke”:Interpreting Dreams with Chaucer and the Harley Scribe Available to Purchase

This article contrasts Chaucer's attitude toward dream visions and the Somniale tradition with English and Latin Somniale works in two of the Harley scribe's manuscripts: London, British Library MSS Harley 2253 and Royal 12.C.xii. It includes an edition of the Royal Somniale Danielis, here edited and translated for the first time. I demonstrate that—in contrast to Chaucer's skepticism—the Harley scribe viewed the Somniale tradition as a valuable source of knowledge worthy of transmission into English. The vast gap between these two figures' approaches to dream interpretation reveals that fourteenth-century attitudes toward texts that bridge the practical/devotional divide were not homogeneous, and that Chaucer's characteristic ambivalence toward and manipulation of dream genres should not be taken as representative.