Dream vision

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Boethius in prison.
Boethius in prison.

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A dream vision is a literary genre, literary device or literary convention in which the narrator falls asleep and dreams. In the dream there is usually a guide, who imparts knowledge (often about religion or love) that the dreamer could not have learned otherwise. After waking, the narrator usually resolves to share this knowledge with other people. If the dream vision includes a guide that is a speaking inanimate object, then it employs the trope of prosopopoeia.

The dream-vision convention was widely used in European literature from late Latin times until the fifteenth century. Boethius, in his De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), was probably the first to use this device. His work, composed in alternate passages of verse and prose, was written while he was imprisoned, circa 524 CE.

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