Parlement of Foules (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
- First Published: 1380
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Type of Plot: Allegory
- Time of Work: Fourteenth century
- Setting: A dream world
- Principal Characters: Chaucer, Scipio Africanus, Dame Nature, The Formel Eagle, Three Tercel Eagles
- Genres: Poetry, Bestiary, Dream vision
- Subjects: Love or romance, Dreams, Gods or goddesses, Birds, Middle Ages, Fourteenth century, Debates or debating
- Locales: Dreamscape
The Story:
Parlement of Foules opened with comments on the hardships of love, which, the poet and narrator assured his reader, he knew only through his books; and books, he said, were the source of all people’s new discoveries. The narrator, Chaucer, had read Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, one of the most popular stories during the Middle Ages. Chaucer told the reader how, in this story, Scipio Africanus appeared to the younger Scipio in a dream and showed him all the universe, pointing out how small the earth was in comparison with the rest. He advised the...
[The entire page is 2186 words long]
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