San Antonio College Library

Night Errands is a long overdue anthology, comprising personal essays and accompanying poems by over two dozen contemporary American poets. It is the first collection to focus specifically on the messages the subconscious sends nightly to poets, and the ways such communications affect their work. The book is based on the premise that dreams and poetry are intimately related and, in fact, parallel languages. Both rely on compression, juxtaposition,...

A 1976 study of the medieval English dream-poem, set against the background of classical and medieval visionary and religious writings and the theory of dreams from classical times down to Freud and Jung. In this first general treatment of one of the most popular kinds of literature in the Middle Ages, Mr Spearing examines many specific poems in some detail and explores the nature of the visionary tradition in which medieval dream-poets felt themselves...

Reading Dreams contains seven new essays, based on new research, on the interpretation of medieval and Renaissance dreams. The textual focus is both literary and non-literary. Chaucer and Shakespeare are important reference-points, while Langland, the Pearl-poet and Milton receive significant coverage. Diaries, philosophical texts, works on dream theory and medical treatises are also extensively used. The methodology is a mixture of close reading,...