The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision (British Academy Monographs)

The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision provides the first sustained book-length study of Scotland’s engagement with one of the most significant literary forms of the medieval world. The book situates the dream-vision at the heart of Scotland’s literary and intellectual culture, showing how it developed across several centuries, languages, and genres. Moving beyond the traditional focus on dream-poetry, this study demonstrates how the dream-vision intersected with romance, chronicle, epic, and theological writing, reshaping our understanding of Scotland’s pre-Reformation literary canon. Close analysis of both manuscript and print traditions traces how Scottish writers and readers reimagined the dream-vision, establishing a distinctive and enduring contribution. By asking who read these texts, when, and how, the book sheds new light on the circulation, reception, and cultural function of the dream-vision in Scotland. In so doing, The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision seeks to open new methodological and comparative pathways for exploring the global history of the dream-vision.