Article: A conduct book for Richard II.(Geoffrey Chaucer's poem 'The Parliament of Fowls')

So Chaucer identifies, in one of his more explicit source references, the book which he has used for the description of Nature and her parliament of fowls.(1) Unlike the "olde bok totorn" (110), the Macrobius text of and commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, which is given at the outset as the basis for his vision, the "Pleynt of Kynde" reference appears halfway through the poem, midway through the dream vision, after the dreamer's guided tour through Venus' temple of brass and coinciding with his identification of the time as St. Valentine's Day.(2) The mention of Alain (1125/30-1203) may seem important only insofar as it affords an opportunity to refer to the ...

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