Cabinetmakers

This anthology provides new editions of five 15th-century English poems framed as dreams and demonstrates the energy with which this influential medieval form was explored by post-Chaucerian writers. Lydgate's Temple of Glass, a complex love vision, generates a counsel of a wide-ranging kind; The Kingis Quair of James I of Scotland and Love's Renewal from the English poems of Charles of Orleans manipulate autobiographical detail to philosophical and political ends; the anonymous Assembly of Ladies foregrounds women's voices; and finally, Skelton's Bowge of Court adapts the love vision to the purposes of a satire on court life.