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The Book of the Duchess and Other Poems

 

He describes the offering he would make to Morpheus and to his goddess, Juno: an elaborate bed of doves' down, with striped gold and black satin and linen from Reynes. He would give this gift to obtain the swift and deep sleep that Alcyone did when Juno answered her prayer.
             The narrator then falls asleep on his book and experiences so strange and wonderful a dream that, he says, no one on earth can properly interpret it. Not even the famous Biblical interpreter of dreams, Joseph, who read dreams for Pharaoh (see  Genesis, Book 41), nor Macrobius, the late Roman author who wrote a famous (in Chaucer's day) commentary on  Cicero's  Dream of Scipio, would have the skill to read the fantastic dream the narrator had that night.
             Analysis.
             Burying the body of a relative with proper rites was a recurring theme in classical literature (such as in Sophocles' play  Antigone), so it was not surprising that Ovid would make it part of the story of Seys and Alcyone. It was believed by the ancient Greeks (and held as a pious belief by the ancient Romans, although by Ovid's time it was probably considered more of a superstition among the educated classes) that if a body wasn't buried properly, the departed's soul would not rest. Therefore, the living were required to treat the dead properly, and the prevention of survivors from doing so was the instigation of dramatic crisis in many works of classical literature.
             The narrator's slightly humorous description of the gift he would give the god Morpheus is a parallel to the pious offering that Alcyone makes in her prayer to Juno. Alcyone asks Juno to give her news of her lost husband, and in return Alcyone will give to Juno "sacrifise/And hooly youres become I shal/With good wille, body, herte, and al:" (lines 114-116) "in short, to become the goddess's acolyte. Since Juno was, among other things, the goddess of wives and of marriage, she would welcome a pious wife (now widow) into her service.


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