Dreams, Visions, and the Rhetoric of Authority

John Bickley received his Ph.D. in humanities from Florida State University, where he was the recipient of a doctoral presidential fellowship and focused on medieval literature, medievalism, and adaptation theory. He earned his M.A. in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among his scholarly works,Bickley has published entries for Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary,co-authored an introduction and bibliographical material for the Penguin Classics edition of Joel Chandler Harris’s Nights with Uncle Remus (2003), and contributed to a casebook on Woody Allen.

• Introduction: Dreams, Visions, and the Rhetoric of Authority – The Authority of Form: Dream and Vision Genres – Authorizing Strategies in the Dreams and Visions of Daniel – Macrobius: Establishing the Authoritative Philosophical Form – Julian of Norwich: The Authorizing Discourses of the Medieval Visionary – Fractured Authority: Chaucer’s Ironic Dream Vision – Conclusion: The Rhetoric of Authority – Appendix: Dream and Vision Genres – Index.

“In Dreams, Visions, and the Rhetoric of Authority, John Bickley brings a fresh perspective to a field so well-worked that one might have supposed there was nothing left to say. Bickley puts the lie to this supposition with a study that sheds new light on a range of literary dream visions by scrutinizing them through the lens of rhetorical authority and arguing that they were composed by authors driven largely by the anxiety of authority. Students of Chaucer, and Middle English literature in general, will be particularly interested in this well-written and important study.”—David F. Johnson, Professor, Department of English, Florida State University