Chaotic crowds

1 passages · search this phrase →

Often appears with: waking from a dream · vision conclusion · the passions and the emotions · study and writing · dreams, sleep, and visions · divine revelation

Usually: reflection (1) · confronting death (1) · detachment (1) · wonder (1)

Quotable

“And therewith I anon abraid Out of my sleepe, half afraid; Rememb’ring well what I had seen, And how high and far I had been In my ghost; and had great wonder Of what the mighty god of thunder Had let me know; and gan to write Like as ye have me heard endite.” Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems · vivid

The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems primary

Geoffrey Chaucer · c. 1387–1400 (composition of The Canterbury Tales and included poems; some items likely earlier/later)
i.e. > Act, which was passed soon after, 5 H. IV. c. iv., to make it felony ‘to multiply gold or silver, or to use the art of multiplication.’” Tyrwhitt finds in the prologue some colour for the hypothesis that this Tale was intended by Chaucer to begin the return journey from Canterbury; but against this must be set the fact that the Yeoman himself expressly speaks of the distance to Canterbury yet to be ridden. (110/112)

The vision escalates into a chaotic crowd scene of people climbing and stamping, and the narrator awakens, astonished at the thunder-god’s revelation, then resolves to study and write daily.

leap, And clomb* upon each other fast, <88> *climbed And up the noise on high they cast, And trodden fast on others’ heels, And stamp’d, as men do after eels. But at the last I saw a man, Which that I not describe can; But that he seemed for to be A man of great authority. And therewith I anon abraid* *awoke Out of my sleepe, half afraid; Rememb’ring well what I had seen, And how…