ABSTRACT
Gardens figure prominently in three of Chaucer’s four extant dream-poems as settings through which his dreamers walk, or into which they wake. In addition, Chaucer not only uses stock descriptions for the outdoor spaces, but he also combines garden topoi in new ways, self-consciously playing on the conventions of nature description. Medieval gardens are most commonly thought of as the small, enclosed herbaria and cloister gardens represented in numerous manuscript illuminations. The outdoor areas created by Chaucer in two early dream-poems indeed suggest artfully arranged gardens, and he use the term garden in the broadest sense of the word—as an outdoor area rearranged or replanted by humans. Beyond their roles as markers of social status and wealth, Chaucer’s early gardens in the Book of the Duchess and the Parliament of Fowls serve as thresholds between parts of the narratives through which the dreamers must walk, thus enhancing an analogy between poem and journey.
