"A Familiar Vois and Stevene": Hearing Voices in Chaucer's Dream Visions

Abstract:This article uses an aurality studies approach to the medieval concept of janglynge, whose semantic meaning ranges from idle chatter to animal noise, to sound out Chaucer's particular attentiveness to the act of listening in his dream visions. While Chaucer's first poem, The Book of the Duchess, illustrates the distinctions between hearing and listening, and highlights different relational dynamics implicit in various modes of listening, the implications of this aural preoccupation for his own poetics emerges most concretely in his two most famous dream visions, The Parliament of Fowls and The House of Fame, both of which clearly pivot from visual to aural perceptual modes over the course of their narratives. Here Chaucer's engagement with janglynge through The Parliament's bird calls and the acousmatic voices in the House of Rumor highlights his sense of the partiality of his own poetic voice, dependent as it is on the collaboration of his auditor to come into being.