ABSTRACT
In a more attempt to return to an older, less sacramental account of the poem, Dr j. Wimsatt, lost in tracing and retracing the French poems from which Geoffrey Chaucer extensively borrowed, never reached any conclusions about the meaning and form of Chaucer’s dream. At the end of Dr Wimsatt’s vision from Chapel Hill occurs a daunting enumeration of every conceivable Old French source for nearly three-quarters of Chaucer’s composition. Chaucer’s habitual manner maintains a bland indifference to, and independence from, the usage of clientship. If such relationships existed he neither advertised them nor sought profit from them. Chaucer is the first medieval author to apply the process of objectification to the unexpected confrontation of the anxious mind by a reading of a literary account which accidentally agrees with the melancholic’s repressed experience. Turning to Chaucer, the mood seems less artistically contrived, but in fact more attention has been paid to syntax, rhythm and the placing of emphasis and climax.
