Medieval trope of the Dream Vision

For my short paper, I discussed The Canterbury Tales as complaint literature, and argued that both Chaucer and the Pearl-poet complain about the practice of pilgrimage during medieval times. As we know, The Canterbury Tales used the pilgrimage narrative to combine all sorts of different tales. Because Chaucer-pilgrim and Chaucer-poet are different people, Chaucer-poet is exonerated as author and removed from the tales, so he cannot be culpable of complaint against the church. In Pearl, a man falls asleep and receives a divinely inspired vision that gives him a glimpse of New Jerusalem. However, he cannot humble himself fully before God and is therefore barred from entering. In my research, I came across someone's dissertation, which proved to be very interesting. The author talks about dream visions, different ways of accumulating knowledge, and goes into more in-depth studies on four or five different medieval texts, including Piers Plowman and Chaucer's House of Fame. She also discusses Julian of Norwich's visions. I think I found the article through JSTOR, but if not, I have a PDF that I can email to anyone who might need it.

Barr, Jessica G. “The Limits of Revelation: Visionary Knowing and the Medieval Dream Vision.” Brown University, 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.